Half-Life: Hyperforce
by The Dip
Summary: Corporal Adrian Shephard. Marine and savior of the human race, is released from stasis by the man he had come to hate with a burning passion. Plunged into a world completely different from his own. New friends will be made, old friends will be found, and old enemies will be uncovered. Will he be able to defend this world from the coming chaos and deal with a pudding loving goddess?
1. Prologue

He had dealt the final blow to the geneworm.

In his hands he held Gill the baby shocktrooper and grenade launcher. Silently the two of them watched as the gene worm roared and cried the room around them shaking bits and pieces of the ceiling crumbling from the walls and ceiling around them.

Adrian sighed, he knew he wasn't going to make it out of here alive.

'Wonder what they'll tell mom and dad about my death.' Its obvious what would happen, they would drum up some story about him being killed in action by terrorists or some shit. He had fought through absolute hell killing head humping parasites, Laser zapping aliens, and defeated a giant worm that had the potential to destroy the world.

'A hell of way to go out.'

Adrian looked down at Gill who looked up at him with its nonexistent eyes, while Sparky on his back whined, and Barney was just being his quiet self hanging from his belt.

'At Least I can die with my friends at my side. Even if I've only known them for a day and are aliens…'

The Geneworm let out a final ear deafening roar before it began to fade away, and the facility shook to the point Adrian could no longer hold his balance. The floor beneath him giving way to the dark abyss below. He neither screamed nor make a sound as in the end he knew he had done something good.

The world around him faded to black and he had thought it was all over.

But no…

For someone else had other plans for him. Very special plans.

For silence was replaced with the all to familiar sound of an Ospreys continuous thumping engine. He opened his eyes and for a second thought it was all a dream, he was in an osprey. But the idea that everything he had experienced being merely a dream was thrown out the window when he noticed the man in the familiar blue suit with a briefcase standing in front of him.

"Sooo, Corporal Shephard, we meet at last. Please dont think I've been avoiding you, a great many matters require my attention in these troubled times." his next words struck a nerve in the marine. "I do hope you understand."

'I'm going to show you, you fucking- what the fuck!?' He couldn't move, it was like he had no control over his own body. As he fought to try to get his body to respond to his movements the man continued to speak.

"And now I require further indulgence on your part. I cannot close my report until every loose end has been tied up. The biggest embarrassment being Black Mesa Facility, but I think that's finally taken care of itself."

A flash of blinding light followed by a loud rumble and shake of the earth slightly jolted the osprey. He didn't need to see the explosion to know that was the warhead. Under his mask he gritted his teeth in anger, he had disarmed that warhead and this bastard rearms it killing thousands of not only his brothers in arms but innocent scientists and civilians as well. He was going to make the bastard pay for killing those people.

He guaranteed that.

"Quite so…"

Another flash of light and the scenery outside the Osprey changed from the New Mexico desert to that of the alien world he had visited previously.

"But there is still the lingering matter of… witnesses. I admit I have a fascination with those who adapt and survive against all odds…" he did that creepy smile again and it chilled Adrian to no end. "They rather remind me of myself…"

He was going to tear his fucking spine out the second he gets the…

"If for no other reason, I have argued to preserve you, for a time."

Another flash of light and now they were in the dark void of nothingness.

"While I believe a civil servant like yourself understand the importance of discretion, my employers are not quite so trusting and rather than continually subject you to the irresistible human temptation of telling all, we've decided to convey you somewhere you can do no possible harm and where no harm can come to you."

Adrian continued to fight against the invisible bounds holding him in his sitting position, the only muscle he had control over was his eyes and on his left the cockpit door slid open revealing a large green portal he had seen the aliens use to get around.

"I'm sure you can imagine there are worse alternatives…"

He continued to stare angrily at the suited man who did not falter under his deathly glare and instead of saying anything else he simply walked through the cockpit portal and disappearing leaving him alone.

He wanted to scream, to yell out bloody murder at that suited man. Everything he had done, all his brothers who had died, all the innocent blood spilled. All of it was for nothing and in the end what did he get? A fate worse than death.

The world around him faded away. No longer in the osprey he just floated their in the dark eternal void with nothing but his thoughts to accompany him. Slowly his consciousness began to slip and his eyelids began to grow heavy like all the continuous activity he had gone through had suddenly finally caught up to him.

'This isn't over. No not by a longshot. I will avenge my brothers. I will avenge the lives you had taken. And I will kill you for all the shit you had put me through…' those were the last thoughts Adrian had before finally succumbing to sleep.

 **SUBJECT: Adrian Shephard.**  
 **Age: Twenty-Two.**  
 **Status: Detained. Further evaluation pending.**

"Rise and shine Corporal Shephard, rise and shine…"

That voice…

The blackness surrounding Adrian, the black endless expanse of nothingness he had grown accustomed to looking at for who knew how long suddenly became replaced with the familiar osprey from his previous meeting with the 'government agent.'

"Not that I wish to imply that you have been sleeping on the job, no one is more deserving of a rest and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste. Until well lets just say my employers have found a place your services per say can be proven quite useful…"

The familiar man in the blue suit materialized from the void standing in front of Adrian, that creepy salesman smile plastered on his face. He could feel his blood boil and all that anger he had stored up for him come flooding back into his system.

'Go to fucking hell I will never work for you!'

"Of course refusal to cooperate could prove problematic. But the choice is yours…"

Either he read his thoughts or not was lost on Adrian, but the way he said it made it sound like he had no true choice in the matter and refusing would be his end and he wasn't to keen on dying even if it meant he had to work under the will of 'him' plus there was no way of knowing if an opportunity would ever present itself for him to break away and get an open strike at his back.

The best thing he could as of now was just play along and wait for the right opportunity to strike him.

"It is time to choose Corporal, what will it be?" He stuck out his hand to the marine who looked down at it contemplating for a long while. But eventually against his own judgement took the basterds hand and shook it. Even through his glove the agents hand felt cold like ice.

The suited man smiled slyly. "Wisely done, Corporal…"

They let go of their hands. Or rather Adrian did.

The Government man pulled his hand down, and adjusted his tie a portal materializing behind him. "Well this has been a rather… brief meeting, but I have other… businesses to attend to." Hix next words making Adrian glad he didn't turn down the 'offer' he just took. "And be aware Corporal, We will be watching you…" his words sounded more as a threat then a warning, and personally it kind of scared the marine.

Adrian watched as the man stepped into the portal leaving him alone once more in the osprey.

'What the fuck have I just agreed to?' He feels like he just sold his soul to the devil himself and it's very possible hey may have done so. But he wasn't going to let go without a fight, he had not fought through a facility of aliens and defeat a giant worm just to be turned into someone else's pawn. He will break free and when he does he will go after that suit wearing bastard.

Looking out into the black expanse of the open osprey door a bright white light flashed blinding the marine, following this was the sound of a loud rapid beeping emitting from within the cockpit and rushing air. It didnt take long for Adrian to realize what was going on as he had been in this situation once before, and this time he wouldn't make the same mistake he did before. The osprey was going down in what appeared to be some sort of forested area, and he was falling fast.

Acting quickly Adrian began putting on his seats harness tightening it as best as he could. Once he was secure to the seat he looked around for something to hold onto, usually you would just the trust the seat to do its job in keeping you alive in scenarios such as this but after everything he had been through he wasn't taking any chances. Finding nothing within reach he could use to help keep himself steady and how close to the ground the osprey was getting he had to settle on holding onto the seat for extra support, now all he could do was pray he survived this.

He couldn't remember happened after that as everything went black. But when he awoke the only thing he could feel was utter pain.

Pain was all Adrian could feel upon regaining consciousness after the impact. The pain wasn't like that of being shot by a bullet or hit with a ball of electricity, no. This pain consisted of a massive headache and almost every muscle in his body being sore like he had gone through his first day of basic training all over again.

Adrians blurry vision began to clear up and gradually he began to take in the damage of the osprey. He was still in his seat thankfully and he appeared to still have all his limbs intact and body free of any protruding objects.

The osprey on the other hand was an entirely different story.

For starters the entire front section of the vehicle leading into the cockpit had been completely ripped off, the cabin was in complete disarray with wires from the roof spilling out into tangled messes and the hull dented in most areas.

After a few minutes taking in his surroundings and his situation, Adrian undid the harness that held him to the seat and left the confines of cabin stepping outside.

He appeared to have crashed in some sort of clearing in the middle of a forest. Where exactly was lost upon the marine, but he was relieved to at least still be on earth.

A few meters away from the torn off cabin of the osprey Adrian found the front section of the vehicle appearing to be in no better shape. And littering the clearing were large chunks of the hull along with the torn off wings and engines, as well as…

Crates?

'What the fuck?'

Were those with him during the crash? No they couldn't be, the osprey was built for transport of troops not equipment.

Curious Adrian walked over to the nearest one and brushed aside the bits of dirt exposing the white print embedded in the plastic green crate.

'PROPERTY OF THE USMC'

Undoing the latches on the side of the crate Adrian opened it up. Inside he found a standard army knife along with an m9 beretta and a few clips to go with it. He took them placing the knife in the sheath on his PVC and the pistol in a holster on his hip. Finding nothing else inside he moved on to opening the others. In the other crates the marine found more weapons along with ammo to go with them. An mp5 with a grenade launcher, a couple of hand grenades, some tripmines, and a satchel charge.

Having finished his search and double checking to make sure he missed nothing of importance, Adrian moved on to his next issue. Finding civilization. He doubted he could use the radio to contact the military seeing as he was probably wanted by the government, and seeing everything they wouldn't just let him go free. His other option was to try to find out where he currently was and find a town, but that begged the question of where he would go from there.

'So my options are either contact command and face possible death, or be on the run for the rest of my life. Fucking great.' Neither of those options sounded good to the marine but after everything he had been through he doubted anything would ever have been easy for him.

A few minutes of contemplating and weighing his options, Adrian reached a decision.

'Fuck it, I didn't come this far just to die…' He wasn't going to let himself get silenced by the people who had sent him into Black Mesa in the first place and he sure as hell wasn't going to go down without a fight.

Adrian turned on his heels and wandered off into the forest in search of society.

 **A/N: A reupload of a story I had uploaded but ended up deleting. But now Im back and with a plan.**


	2. Into the Unknown

How long has he been walking for?

Looking up at the position of the sun Adrian could see it had barely began its descent from the peak of its rise. Must have been barely even an hour since he started his exploration through the wilderness of god knows where. But if he had to guess from the biome of lush trees and flora within the forest he would have to guess he was somewhere either on the eastern side of America or someplace in Europe. But he should have at least reached a road or discovered some sorts of signs of civilization by now instead he hasn't heard nothing other than the tweets and howls of birds.

Adrian constantly kept both his eyes and ears on alert, for not only signs of civilization but also for potential dangers. He only had so much ammo and he would rather not have to waste it on a bear or god forbid a pack of wild wolves.

The marine walked through the forest on high alert for danger keeping his steps light as to not make too much noise that could attract a predators attention.

Ten minutes go by in silence his eyes scanning the brush carefully for signs of movement and listening for anything out of the ordinary.

His awareness was rewarded when he could begin to make out the faint sound of rushing water indicating there was a river.

Adrian crept forward in the direction of the sound still cautious keeping his finger on the trigger of the rifle.

He came into a clearing that split into two halves down the middle by a large river. After scanning the clearing for any signs of danger and finding none Adrian walked out and walked to the edge of the flowing river.

He knelt down at the edge of the river and undid the straps on his mask exposing his face allowing his lungs to breath in the natural forest air around him and his nostrils to take in the scent of the forest before plunging his hands into the cool running water and scooping up a handful and placing it to his mouth quenching his parched throat.

He had never realized just how thirsty he truly was up until now, suppose fighting for your life can really pull your mind in another direction. After taking in a few more drinks from the river he put his gas mask on tightening the straps around his face, he felt more comfortable with it on for some odd reason.

Looking down at the river he was preparing to follow the direction of the rivers flow, when his eyes wandered to the brush on the other side of the river and if not for his eyesight he surely would have missed the strange structure just barely visible through the greenery and foliage surrounding it.

From where he stood it appeared to be made out of wood and fairly small like it was a shack. Deciding to get a closer look at it Adrian dove into the river, his PVC could withstand water and more so he had no reason to fear the water. Swimming across the river Adrian reached the other side and made his way over to the object.

Getting closer he could confirm it was in fact a shack. An old one at that, the wood was old and rotting some of the planks barely just holding on by the rusted nails that held them together. Pulling and ripping the foliage aside Adrian unmasked more of the hidden structure until exposing a wooden door locked in place by a rusted padlock.

He fiddled with the padlock but found he was unable to pry it off the old wood or the metal that was screwed into the door. Rather than waste time searching for another way of entry Adrian simply bashed the padlock with the butt of his rifle.

After a few good hits the old rusted metal gave in and broke apart falling to the forest earth.

'If it doesn't work just bash it a few times' Adrian thought to himself chuckling.

Pulling the door open, the hinges that held the door in place creaked and groaned from the sudden friction being applied having not obviously not been opened or even maintained in many years.

Inside the small shack it was dusty and thanks to his gasmask Adrian had to not worry about it. Lining the walls on either side were a variety of tools that looked as old as the shack itself. Screwdrivers, drills, hammers, all that stuff lined the walls hung up by nails.

At the back wall was a workshop table with a once red tool box that was now rusted with a majority of the red paint that made up its coat now flakey and falling apart. The marine approached the tool box and pulled it open and began rummaging through the box in search anything of use.

Most of the stuff inside of it was crap and useless, like hammers, screwdrivers, drill bits, etc. He was just about to give up believing there was nothing inside he could have used until his eyes caught a glimpse of red beneath a pile of oil stained cloth at the bottom of the tool box. Moving the cloth aside he took the object in his hands.

Easy to carry, fairly heavy, and most importantly; heavy enough to break a motherfuckers bones with the right amount of force.

The Pipe Wrench.

Unlike the rest of the tools in the shack this one seemed in pristine condition despite the few flakes of rust here and there. Adrian tested the weight of the Pipe Wrench in his hands giving it a few short swings, it felt just right in his hands. Granted it was no knife the wrench had been a mighty tool that had saved his ass more than once back in Black Mesa.

Adrian clipped the wrench to his belt and searched the remained of the shack but found nothing else of use. Done with his search Adrian left the shack and continued on his way.

He started following the river flow south. Hopefully he would find a city or even a village. Worse case scenario was he wanders into a village and discovers he's in some place like Russia. The idea of being taken captive by nations government did not sit well with the young marine. It wasn't everyday the soldier of a rival nation would come wandering into a village in full uniform and Adrian doubted they would believe his story…

He was just going to have to hope he wasn't in Russia and was just in some place like Europe or something.

'Hopefully they have pizza. I could go for some right about now…'

His mind started to wander again back to Black Mesa and all his fellow marines and who probably had survived.

'I wonder if anyone made it out of Black Mesa…' He doubted that though it was possible they were all silenced by those black ops pricks he had fought against now that he thought about it. Even then it was unlikely the government would simply just let them all go after everything they all saw. Unless they all got paid to keep their mouths shut.

'Probably all in the Bahamas getting wasted if that's the case…' he felt a bit jealous now.

'No early retirement for me though, no I have to…'

"Dogoo!"

Adrian halted in his tracks his internal complaining interrupted by a sudden sound. He was so busy complaining he didn't hear where it had come from, and scanning the area around him did nothing to help identify where the noise had come from.

"Dog-Dogoo!"

Their it was again. Suddenly from the brush in front of Adrian rustled and shifted causing him to instinctively bring his wrench up into a swing. But lowered it when the creature responsible for making the sound came out from the brush and into view.

"Dogoo!" it yelled.

Adrian was at a sudden loss of words unable to comprehend what it was he was now looking at. It wasn't like any animal nor alien he had ever seen before, though he shouldn't be surprised considering what he had encountered before, but this…

It was some sort of blue jelly tear shaped blob with a dog like snout and tail with two beady black eyes. On its face it had an unwavering smile that formed into an O at the sight of Adrian.

"Dogoo?" it said questioningly looking at the wrench wielding marine hopping closer making Adrian step back raising his weapon up threateningly.

If this creature was smart like it was giving off then it would understand the 'back off' gesture he was making. He was willing to give this thing the benefit of the doubt and let it hop away in peace so long as it didn't get too close to him.

Adrian started circling around the creature keeping his wrench up in a defensive manner all the while keeping his full focus on the blob and his environment incase it had any friends nearby waiting for the moment to strike.

As he moved around the small dog blob it turned around to keep starting at him with that unwavering smile that gave Adrian the chills despite how cute it looked. Backing away into the brush the creature had emerged from the blob just stood there staring at him watching him back away.

Once he was out of sight of the blob Adrian turned on his heels and hauled his ass away from the creature and whatever possible friends it could have.

'What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.'

What in the actual fuck was that thing? Was that some alien he had never encountered that had escaped to earth? No it couldn't have been, the entire facility was burned in fire, how the fuck did they survive?

So many questions swirled through Adrians mind as he pushed himself to run as fast as he could. He doubted his wrench would do anything against a boneless blob and he had no intent to figure out how it defended itself. For all he knew its body could be corrosive acid and one touch could melt him to a puddle.

He continued on running for a good ten minutes until he was sure he would have lost the damn thing. Looking back the way he had run Adrian made sure he was not followed by either that jelly alien or anything else that could have spotted him while running.

He leaned himself against a tree and allowed his body a moment of rest while he gathered his thoughts on what he had just witnessed.

Last time Adrian had checked, their was no record of some jelly dog ever existing on Earth. That could only mean the warhead detonation failed allowing the aliens to escape and were now roaming the Earth.

He would have believed he was on some other world for a moment, but the shack and forest told him he was still on Earth.

'How long was I gone?'

If he had been gone what if humanity no longer existed? What if they were wiped out by the aliens? He had doubts all of humanity would be gone, but the collapse of global government was a likely scenario Adrian could only hope did not occur.

He rested on the tree for a while longer before finally getting himself together.

If humanity was still somewhat alive he wasn't going to be much use just sitting here. He was a marine despite his government having betrayed him, and his duty as a soldier was to help those in need no matter the risk.

With new found motivation to continue moving Adrian started on his walk again continuing to follow the river as he had planned starting to think of a plan.

If society really is gone having been destroyed by the aliens, than that meant Adrian was going to need find survivors. If he was lucky he would find a small settlement or some place occupied by humans who can fill him in on what happened in his absence. If not he can scavenge.

Worst case scenario he encounter some not so friendly people who'd love to get ahold of his PVC…

But whatever is held for Adrian in the future, he will be ready for it.

 **A/N: Kind of a short chapter, a bit to short for my taste but I think it's a good place to leave off for now.**


	3. A New Kind of Threat

'Fuck off you little shits!'

Adrian swung his wrench angrily using as much force he could muster.

"Doggooo-"

The jelly dog in front of him was silenced by the collision of the soldiers wrench meeting its face followed by a swift kick that sent it flying back into the tree where it exploded into bits of blue goop. Hearing movement on his left Adrian whirled around to see two more of the creatures hopping towards him with that unwavering smile on their faces. It had been barely thirty minutes since his first encounter with the first alien lifeform and since that encounter he had no luck in avoiding them.

The marine raised his left hand wielding his beretta firing two bullets at each of the aliens blowing them both to bits with just a single shot when suddenly on both his left and right more began to exit from the brush, the creatures appeared to be spreading out encircling Adrian leaving him with nowhere to run or to retreat.

There had to be nearly twenty of them closing in on him. Adrian holstered his pistol and clipped his wrench to his side and unslung his mp5. Ready to unleash absolute hell on his opponents, he raised his mp5 placing the first alien in front of him in his sights.

But they just stopped advancing suddenly. The smile on their faces replaced with a blank stare.

Confused by this Adrian lowered his weapon a little bit to study the phenomenon. They appeared to be shaken and almost afraid shown by their shaking. Their faces became panicked and before he could study it further they began hopping backwards into the brush from where they came all the while eyeing their surroundings fearfully.

Adrian was soon left alone in the empty clearing confused and a bit afraid now.

If those aliens suddenly backed off afraid for no apparent reason, that meant only one of two things. One was that they suddenly became aware of how powerful his weapons were, which he doubted as they seemed to have no sort of brain or common sense whatsoever. Or two was that…

 ***ROAR***

A loud thunderous roar emanated from behind Shephard followed by earth shaking stomps that grew ever closer to him.

A bigger predator was nearbye…

Turning around the young marine watched as a massive hulking brown reptilian creature stomped towards him with massive machete sized claws and predatory filled yellow eyes.

Instinctively Adrian began backing away raising his mp5 and firing at the towering lizard, but all his bullets did was simply ricochet off of his tough scaley hide and only serve to make it angrier as it roared and charged towards him.

'Shit, shit, shit, shit!' Adrian turned on his heels and began running away with the lizard tailing behind him.

 **(Insert timecard and french accent here)**

 **TEN MINUTES LATER**

'Goddamnit how persistent is this thing!?'

He had been running from the massive lizard for a solid ten minutes now and the damn thing shows no sign of giving up even after all his attempts to shake it off of his tail. Adrian jumped over a fallen tree his breathing heavy and rugged from the constant running. His pursuer was not to far behind and it wouldn't be long before it caught up to him. He had managed to put some distance between the two of them but it wouldn't be enough to get it off his back.

He needed to hide…

Looking around Adrian spotted a cave not to far away. In normal circumstances Adrian would have deemed a cave a terrible hiding spot from a pursuing predator as it could most likely corner him if it was smart enough to search the cave, but right now he had no time to think as another loud roar and familiar stomping grew closer behind him.

'Fuck it!'

Adrian hauled his ass into the cave without so much as looking back, all that mattered now was trying to get away from that behemoth.

By the time he finally stopped to rest the last of the light illuminating from the caves entrance had all but disappearing leaving the young marine in a black dark void similar to when he was in stasis a few hours ago.

It was quiet all except for his heavy ragged breathing.

He gave himself a moment's rest allowing himself to recover. Once he recovered Adrian decided to flip on his masks night vision lighting the world up in a bright green light, allowing him to take in the environment around him.

It was all you would expect from a cave, rocks, rocks, and more rocks. The large chamber in front of him extended out towards the darkness in which his night vision could not reach. With nowhere to go but forward Adrian journeyed deeper into the cave eyes constantly scanning the path in front of him and occasionally behind him for anymore aliens or a certain giant lizard. Everything was silent except for his footfalls bouncing off the caves walls. It made the young marine feel uneasy seeing as he was followed by trouble everywhere he went and moments of peace were like a distant dream out of his reach. Of course that was the price to pay when you joined the military, a price Adrian did not regret paying for.

As Adrians mind wandered away from reality remembering to everything that had happened to him leading up to this moment, a stinging pain of guilt stabbed him in the gut. His brothers, his friends, all dead. He could have saved them…

'No. No it wasn't my fault' Adrian thought to himself trying to reassure himself it wasn't his fault. There was nothing he could have done it was out of his control.

But why did he feel guilty? Why did he feel responsible for their deaths?

Was it because he was working for the man who had done it?

Probably but he guess it doesn't matter now, what's done is done. All he could now was wait for the right opportunity to escape.

Adrian had no idea how long he had been wandering for, it was hard to tell when everything around you was just green rocks and darkness. This cave was a lot deeper then he had expected it to be with twists and turns that had on more then one occasion nearly made the marine get lost when encountering a dead end, but again thanks to his training he was able to backtrack using small rocks he found lying around to mark his position.

He stopped at yet another intersection. On his left and right stood two paths each leading down their own dark abyss. He eyed the both of them carefully searching the darkness for movement and used his ears to listen for anything out of the ordinary other than his breathing. Without looking away from the pathways Adrian used his free left hand to reach into his pants pocket to pull out a small rock while his right hand stayed holding his mp5.

He placed the rock down marking his position so if and when he backtracked he would know he was just here.

With his position marked Adrian moved to the right tunnel deciding to explore it first. The dark abyss was pierced by his green vision the closer he got exposing the surrounding walls along with more darkness.

The pathway behind became shrouded in darkness the further in he moved.

 **CLICK CLICK CLICK**

Adrian stopped and whirled around pointing his weapon at the darkness behind him.

 **CLICK CLICK CLICK**

A series of rapid clicks similar to that of little feet resonated from within the darkness. The sound repeated a few more times then suddenly stopped entirely. He stood as still as a statue finger wrapped around the trigger and eyes actively scanning the darkness.

Nothing ever came out.

His instincts told him to turn back now, but going against his own mind Adrian slowly began to back up ears perked for that clicking noise. His back suddenly made contact with something soft and stretchy.

Adrian found himself unable to turn his back now alerting him something was clearly wrong. Looking over his shoulder he found the path in front of him was completely blocked off by what appeared to be a giant web of thin fibers, like that of a spider web.

Adrian grabbed a handful of the web with his left hand and pulled in an attempt to rip the web apart. It was all for naught though seeing as the web was rather stretchy and now he was unable to get his grip off the web.

'Son of a bitch.'

Looking at his only free hand holding his mp5, Adrian internally sighed dropping his gun to the floor. With his right hand free now he unsheathed his combat knife from the vests sheath and looked up at where his hand was stuck now going to work at cutting the web surrounding his hand.

It was taking a bit of work seeing as the material was more resistant then he had expected making it a bit of work to cut through but he was making progress nearly freeing his arm from the sticky web.

 **CLICK CLICK CLICK**

Suddenly he heard that clicking sound again this time a lot closer than last time and was gradually growing louder. He stopped his work to look in the direction he had just come from and staring at him through the darkness were nearly a dozen white orbs.

Whatever the creature was it let out a loud hiss and if Adrian looked closely he could just make out the tips of what looked like a pair of mandibles.

It didnt take a genius to put two and two together.

Giant web. Beast with a dozen eyes and mandibles.

'SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!' Adrian internally screamed pushing his right arm to cut through the webbing holding his left hand hostage.

The beast began to creep out from the shadows. Exposing its massive sharp drooling mandibles, its glowing oval eyes. The creature was massive almost the size of Adrian himself. It hissed spraying bits of its saliva on the floor in front of it and crept towards him.

'Fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, shit!' he began cutting faster glancing back at the spider that was closing in now just a few feet away and only getting closer.

'Come on you fucker break!' The web became weakened enough for Adrian to rip his hand away from the web. The spider lunged at him but was held at bay by both of his hands gripping its snapping drooling mandibles.

He grunted doing everything in his power to hold the monster back. It retaliated by twisting and turning its body left and right in an attempt to break from the marines grip on its mandibles. But barely Adrian was able to hold on to them as even with his gloves the saliva made his grip slippery.

Not to mention being stuck back first to a sticky web with a spider trying to gnaw at your face all being seen in green night vision was pretty terrifying even for him.

The spider was standing on its hind legs while its fronts were gripping onto his shoulders. Maneuvering his right foot up he channeled all his power into a mighty kick directly at its exposed underbelly successfully making it cry and back away freeing Adrian from its grasp.

Using the moment to his advantage he reached for his beretta drawing it from its holster at his right hip and wasted no time opening fire on the recovering spider.

The spider reeled back screeching in pain as Adrians shots punched into it. Though some of the shots barely pierced its carapace the more precise shots aimed for its exposed flesh, mainly the face and eyes, easily punched through tearing into its body.

Adrians gun clicked empty indicating he had used up all of the ammo in his magazine. He looked up at the bleeding spider stumbling left and right groaning in utter pain and bleeding from its face with a majority of its eyes completely obliterated. It tried to step forward but collapsed right where it was, limbs going limp.

But Adrian knew better, and assumed the possibility it could to still be alive. He ejected his magazine from the beretta replacing it with a fresh one from his vests pouch, then he grabbed his knife and began cutting his way out of the web.

The action took a whole dreaded fifteen minutes of cutting and occasional stops to check to make sure the spiders corpse didn't move. But now he was finally free.

Ripping the bits of web off of his back Adrian holstered his beretta and picked up his mp5 which he had nearly forgotten about the entire ordeal.

Making his way over to the corpse slowly Adrian caught a glimpse of something strange happening to the spiders corpse. It was…

'Disintegrating?'

The spiders body was slowly dissolving into what appeared to be particles that quickly disappeared into the air.

This boggled the marine to no extent.

He tried to come up with some sort of reason as to what he was witnessing but none of it connected with anything he had witnessed prior.

'Get a fucking grip!' Adrian shook him out of his stupor, he needed to get out of this cave asap. He doubted that was the only spider, and the gunfire was sure to attract more of them to his location.

But he couldn't just go back the way he came, that giant lizard was probably still looking for him.

'So it's either a cave full of giant spiders or- fuck it I'll take my chances with the lizard…'

Adrian hated spiders. He wasn't scared of them, but he hated spiders for the sole fact they had too many eyes and legs. But giant spiders was a whole other realm of fucked he wasn't going to put up with.

Adrian started backtracking the way he had come, arriving back at the intersection he had just come from. But...

'Son of a bitch!'

His pathway back was now blocked by a wall of fallen rocks.

'When did this tunnel collapse!?'

It must have collapsed during his fight with the spider when his full attention was focused so he didn't notice or hear the collapse of rocks. But how could this have happened? He understood things degrade overtime and shit happens. But this?

Adrian narrowed his eyes, something was telling him a certain blue suited prick was playing with him now.

'Spiders it is!'

 **MEANWHILE ELSEWHERE**

"La la la la la la, singing a song about absolutely nothing!" A short purple haired girl sang happily as she skipped through the forest with a large sword in her hand. She skipped about the forest cutting down any monster that got in her way.

Her happy look soon became a look of boredom. "Ugh this is so boring! Hey author give me something interesting already!"

 **(Breach! Breach Detected! Activate 4th wall defenses!)**

"Come on I know you can hear me, seriously I'm the protagonist, Neptune! Just give me- Ooooooh, what's that!?" Looking in the distance the girl could see a large cloud of smoke not to far away from her current position.

"Ooooh plot advancement!" she yelled happily taking off in the blink of an eye leaving behind a small dust figure of herself behind.

Neptune reached the source of the smoke which was a large clearing. All around said clearing was scattered metal parts and the source of the smoke. Some sort of aerial vehicle with the front end ripped off from the main body and the engines smoking.

She walked up to the main body of the ship and peeked into the ruined vehicle. Tangled wires hung from the ceiling like party streamers, the walls were beaten inwards like it had been hit with a hammer, and some of the seats on either ends were ripped off.

No sign of anyone though.

She looked back out and spotted a few scattered open green crates. Inspecting them it appeared someone had looted them.

"Hmm this looks like a case for…" Seemingly from out of nowhere Neptune whipped out a Deerstalker hat, a pipe, and magnifying glass.

"Detective Nep!"

With the pipe in her mouth and the magnifying glass in her hand she looked around the clearing for any clues to the whereabouts of the potential survivors aboard the crashed vessel finding a pair of footprints.

 **(cough cough plot convenience cough cough)**

"Aha footprints! This will be sure to lead me to the survivors!" she yelled triumphantly.

With a new lead on this investigation Neptune set off following the tracks.

 **BACK TO ADRIAN**

'Golems! Fucking rock golems!'

Adrian fired at the stone monstrosity unleashing a hailstorm of bullets that tore its stoney body to shreds until it could no longer sustain the damage and burst into particles like the spider from earlier.

He thought he had seen everything. Aliens shooting lightning. Alternate dimensions. Giant spiders. But golems was not something on his list of expectations.

It just appeared from out of thin air literally came from the air itself no shit.

Adrian looked down the halls spotting two more golems along with a few spiders.

He no longer needed to use his night vision seeing as his light sources was provided by these strange conveniently placed blue growing crystals lining the walls around him. Shit just kept getting weirder and weirder for him.

Adrian leveled his mp5 and opened fire on the approaching spiders choosing to take them out before the golems seeing as they were capable of shooting projectile webs that glowed an ominous violet color. Something told him that contact with it would not be good for his health.

His shots on the first spider struck home hitting it directly in its face, the only part of the body his guns actually did damage to. While the spider reeled back crying in pain, the second spider opened fire shooting a web from its mouth at Adrian making him duck away to avoid getting caught in the projectile.

He returned fire at the second one doing his best to conserve ammo and make every shot count seeing as he only had a few clips of ammo left. He had to avoid using his explosives considering the environment he was in was so fragile that an explosion risked bringing the cave down on top of him.

It didn't take many rounds in order to kill the spiders, barely half a magazine. With the two spiders now out of commision he could focus on…

'Shit!'

He hadn't been focusing on the golems who had gotten just within punching distance of him. He narrowly avoided the golems punch, staggering it back with a swift kick to the chest. Buying him some time to switch out his magazines and finish off the two golems.

Adrian scanned the area around him for further hostiles finding none present. He still kept his guard up though, these things appeared from thin air so he was at an unfair disadvantage and one false move could be his death.

Now that he thought about it the aliens appeared from random portals, so this wasn't that different from Black Mesa.

'Huh some things never change.'

He trudged onwards.

 **TO NEPTUNE (I need some filler dammit and I don't see a piano around me)**

Detective Neptune had been following the tracks for quite some time now and as the further she went the fresher the tracks got meaning she was getting close.

Neptune was lead to a riverside where the tracks abruptly ended right at the edge of the river.

"Hmmm… what could this mean?" she thought to herself taking a puff from her pipe. Her eyes wandered to across the river noticing a small wooden construct barely visible through the brush. She smiled finding another lead and made her way across the river.

(I'll let you decide how she got across the river. Also Neptune won't be this aware only for this stupid detective bit.)

Walking up to the wooden construct. Neptune was able to see the place in its full state. It was a rundown shack, clearly very old from the rotting wood. The door to the shed was left completely open and lying by it was a busted padlock.

Looking closely at it with her magnifying glass she could come to the conclusion her suspect had used brute force in order to break open the shed. After a brief investigation inside the shed she found nothing of importance. But she did find a new pair of tracks that matched the ones she had been following nearby this one following the flow of the river, and soon she was back on the trail of hunting the mysterious survivor.

 **BACK TO ADRIAN**

Something was off.

Definitely off. None of this felt right at all. Well none of it ever did to begin with, but now it felt more off than usual and that said quite a lot.

He had been seeing a less and less number of aliens lately and that wasn't an exaggeration that he wasn't encountering them as much as he used to. No they stopped coming. He hasn't seen a single spider or even a golem for about ten minutes now and it was kind of worrying Adrian. The air had become heavier as well making the caves silence all the more eerie.

Adrian was constantly checking his six more then usual paranoid something was going to get the drop on him. Not that it was bad it was good to be afraid in these situations, keeps the mind alert.

'God get me out of this fucking cave already!' Adrian mentally screamed. He was going to lose it down here, at least with the aliens he had something to keep himself occupied. Now he was just bored.

His ears suddenly perked up at the familiar yet distant sound of hope. A sound that meant there was a possible exit to this hell.

'Rushing water!'

Adrian took off the tiredness in his body washed away with the sense of hope of finally escaping this cave. He followed the sound of water which grew louder the closer he got towards it.

It was just up ahead now. Just over the slope in front of him.

He ran up the slope eagerly and took in the sight that was beyond it.

Underneath the mask Adrians eager and happy face became replaced with one of confusion. Confusion for what it was he was staring at. Confusion then turned to shock as Adrians grip on his mp5 loosened and his fingers began to twitch and his mind raced trying to comprehend what this was.

His legs gave in and Adrian collapsed to his knees letting go of his gun letting it fall to his side. A pit grew inside of his stomach and a wave of nausea threatened his stomach.

When he finally recovered from his state of shock…

"WHAT THE FUCK!?"

 **A/N: Boom bitch cliffhanger. What was it Adrian had discovered? Could it be a wayout? His demise? A warehouse of pudding!? Stay tuned to find out. Seriously though if you read this chapter thanks for sticking with me. I know my writing skills suck and I am willing to take criticism so please do not hesitate to give me some pointers if you have any. Until then stay gold ;)**


	4. Old Enemies

No.

No this couldn't be.

This had to be a dream. This had to be some sort of dream. Or some some sort of fucked up mirage from lack of sleep. That had to be it right?

There was no way what Adrian was seeing was real. It couldn't be.

Below Adrian was a large cavernous room that stretched into an almost bottomless void. The source of running water he had heard was coming from a large tunnel on one of the labyrinth walls pouring out water into the blue abyss below.

But that wasn't what shocked Adrian. That wasn't what made him feel nauseous.

It was what was floating above the abyss that scared him.

Floating masses of land floated above the endless void below all connected by sort of bridges that allowed one to walk from island to island held up by beams that connected with the caves roof. In the center of the cavern sat the largest island of them all.

Adrian looked over to his left at the bridge that connected to the closest island. That one connected to another. Then another. Then another. Until it lead to the center island.

Standing up Adrian picked up his mp5 and shakily walked over to the bridge.

'This has to be fake. This has to be fake. This has to be fake.'

He looked down at the bridge inspecting its composition closely. It was a sort of grayish green stone with odd looking vines that covered a majority of the surface area and surrounding it. Adrian ran his hand across it.

'Oh god it's real. This is all real it isn't a mirage…' He felt like his head was going to blow up. His worst fear was true and the evidence was enough now.

Adrian stood up and walked across the bridge making his way to the center island.

'We failed. We failed. We failed, and it was all my fault.'

His body shook nervously.

He reached the center island and fell to his knees once more.

'They fucking did it and I failed to stop it.'

Before Adrian stood a massive portal like construct all of it made of the same composite as everything else.

The geneworm…

So many questions swirled through Adrians mind. How many worms are on earth? Where these monsters he fought a byproduct of their terraforming? What happened to everyone else?

Was he the last man of Earth?

Adrian shook his head. No he couldn't be the world above seemed completely regular minus the aliens, if the worms did make it here then the earth would look like a completely different place. No he can't lose hope yet there still may be time.

Pulling himself together Adrian pulled himself up and walked further up to the portal inspecting it closer.

It wasn't active so that was a good sign.

The place seemed completely void of all life. Not a single living thing could be found by the marine. This puzzled him as their were no signs of there ever being a fight here. No blood, bullets, nothing.

Why would the aliens abandoned a perfectly intact portal like this?

There looked to be nothing wrong with it.

Adrian moved to get a closer look at the portal, but as he got closer the sound of cracking registered among his ears stopping him midstep. He looked around frantically searching for the source of the noise until looking down at his feet.

At his feet were a series of cracks. Adrian froze in place fearing one wrong motion could send him along with the entirety of the island crumbling down into the endless abyss below.

'Why does all this shit have to happen to me. Seriously!?'

Every fucking time. Everytime he comes across something extremely old that looks completely sturdy, he immediately gets bitch slapped by karma. Seriously this island held for fuck knows how long and now that he steps on it, all of a sudden it can't support him. This was absolute bullshit.

The cracks continued to grow and Adrian was silently praying for a miracle to swoop in and save him once again.

The earth beneath Adrian finally gave in and collapsed sending him along with the surrounding land tumbling down deep into an underground cavern within the floating land. Adrian was in a total daze, but thanks to his helmet and armor he suffered no major fractures or damage from the rubble that fell on top of him.

'Mmm...ugh… Whe-where am I?'

Adrian looked up at the hole he had just fallen from.

'Shit that was a hell of a fall.'

He had to have fallen nearly fifty feet. There was no way he was going to be able to get back up there. He was alive though so he had that going for him.

Adrian felt himself lying in something wet and looked down to find he was lying in a pool of some sort of, water? Water wouldn't be the word he would have used though, it was more like a murky greenish brown alien liquid. He was just glad he didn't have to smell it though.

The entirety of the cavern was filled with the stuff no more than ankles deep so he wouldn't have to swim. The room was fairly large not as big as the cave above but it was a decent sized room. It appeared to also be the source of the vines he had seen surrounding the surface of the islands as they all interconnected to these large green like tree structures that grew out from small white spiky egg like pods rooted to the ground beneath the water, they also seemed to act as support beams to the cave seeing as the top of the vine trees connected to the roof.

Adrians looked towards the center of the room spotting the largest vine tree out of them all though unlike the others which were tall and thin. This one in specific was the size of a large oak tree with large bulb like pods growing from the base and lighting up the surrounding area.

Naturally he was drawn towards it. He checked his mp5 making sure his clip still had ammo in it.

It was beautiful. In an alien sense that was. Unlike xen where everything was all fleshy and crawly this was much more pleasing to the eye.

Adrian poked one of the growths with the barrel of his gun finding it was almost as hard as literal stone.

'Weird.'

He inspected the massive tree for a little while going so far as to touch it with his fingers and kicking it lightly a few times. Nothing seemed interesting about it despite standing out from its thinner and smaller brother trees.

'Kind of disappointed I was hoping for- WAGH!'

Something wrapped itself around Adrians ankle and pulled him off his feet and into the air. He was taken completely by surprise and began wiggling around in an attempt to break the grip of whatever it was holding him by the ankle.

'Grrr, come on, come on!' he wiggled like crazy trying to break from the grip.

He was making no progress and quickly gave up. Adrian looked around at the upside down world and then up at his right ankle which was being gripped by a familiar vine like branch.

'Son of a bitch, alright I deserve this.' This was his own mistake and he was paying for it, instead of treating all alien things like a threat and expecting the worst like he should have, he allowed himself to think they were just stupid and ordinary alien plants that couldn't do shit. Well he was paying the price now.

Looking around he could see all the vine branches were moving about now wriggling like worms and some even surrounding him.

One of the branches started poking him in the chest. In response Adrian wriggled away from it.

'Back up jack!'

Probably wouldn't have understood him if he said it vocally anyways, as the others started to do the same poking and prodding at his body like he was a doll. One went so far as to touch him-

'Hey don't touch me there you fucker!'

Suddenly the other vines wrapped themselves around Adrians remaining arms and legs completely restricting his movements.

He looked around himself alarmed eyes falling on a massive vine extending towards him from the bigger vine tree.

'Oh that can't be good.'

Adrian was completely helpless as the larger vine began touching at his body mainly his upper section and not the lower half like that one vine…

The vine poked and prodded at him for a few moments like searching for something. It stopped when it found his exposed forearm and the suddenly retreated back. He wanted to be relieved and think that it was going to leave him alone but his more logical side said otherwise.

It was right as the vine came back this time with something resting on it. It looked like some sort of bug. It was no shockroach as this thing was much smaller and rather than blue it was black with a segmented carapace. It was like a centipede, with small sharp prongs for legs and little pincers.

He tried to struggle but the vines held him completely in place. He could only watch helplessly as the larger vine came back with the alien insect. It wrapped around his forearm. Adrian watched the small alien centipede closely as it awoke letting out a strange high pitched noise and clicked its pincers looking around.

Despite have no eyes the alien sensed him and scuttled its way around his arm where it to began prodding at him with its legs until settling on the underside of his forearm.

Adrian grunted in pain at the stinging feeling of the creature burrowing its legs into his arm. Following the pain was a tingling sensation of burning that rapidly turned into a full on assault of his body's pain receptors.

He did his best to suppress the urge to scream but found himself breathing heavily in attempt to ease the unimaginable pain rocking his body. It was like his nerves were being tuned like a fucking guitar and every strum became worse and worse. His forearm was on fire and through the pain he could feel the faint sense of something trickling down his arm. Most likely blood.

After a full minute of agonizing pain that was far superior to anything a gunshot could ever do, the pain dissipated leaving Adrian gasping for air and lightheaded. The vines holding onto him released their grip sending him falling back into the water and returned to their original positions along the walls and roof. Leaving the marine to pass out where he was.

He could make the faint sounds of a voice right before everything went black for him.

 **MEANWHILE**

"Woooooooow, this looks so cool!" A certain girl with purple hair said excitedly looking at the cave around her.

It was like something straight from an alien movie. Giant floating vine covered islands inside of a cave. Detective Nep had tracked the footprints of her mysterious survivor to a cave which halfway inside was blocked off by a cave in. Of course since this was Neptune not even a wall of fallen rocks was enough to keep her out.

She had encountered a bunch of baddies to but she cut them up with her trusty oversized blade.

Neptune smiled happily. "Histoires gonna be so happy that I saved someone's life, she will have to let me back in the basilicom!" She took off across the bridge crossing over to the main island.

It was there she found a suspiciously large circular structure sitting in the islands center and nearby a large hole. She was here to find the survivor so she went over to the hole ignoring the structure looming over her.

Neptune got down on her knees and peeked down into the hole.

"That looks deeeep. Wonder if anyones down there." She spoke to herself.

"Hello!?" Neptune screamed down the hole. "Any important characters down there that need rescue!?" It was rather hard to see considering how far down it was, but she could make out some slight shapes along with a bit of light.

Usually she would just call it a day and give up, but she couldn't go back to the basilicom until doing something 'useful' as Histoire had stated to her before throwing her out. Plus Detective Nep couldn't leave a case unsolved.

"Welp. Down we go. Wheeeeeeeee!" she jumped down into the hole without so much as a care in the world landing feet first.

Her nostrils were assaulted with an unrecognizable foul smell that was most likely coming from the green water she now stood in. "Ewwwwww. Its all slimy and gross and smelly." she cried shuddering at feeling of the lukewarm smelly water soaking through her shoes.

 **(Seriously I can't stand lukewarm water)**

She looked around the cave she was in. Strange green trees grew out from the water and reached up to the ceilings with vine like limbs growing out across the roofs and walls. In the center was a biggest of them all with weird glowing growths on the body lighting up the surrounding tree.

She walked forward until nearly tripping over something.

"Wooah!" She caught herself before she could fall in the foul smelling water. Recovering from her near fall she looked down at what nearly tripped her and gasped.

Lying face down in the water was the man she had been searching for. Falling to her knees not caring about the water, Neptune grabbed the unconscious man by the side and with all her might tried to push him over.

"C-come on turn over!" She strained trying to turn him over but alas he was to heavy for her. A look of determination grew on her face, "Don't worry buddy, I got just the thing for this!"

Neptune took a step back and in a blinding flash of light she had transformed into her HDD form. No longer a little small girl, she appeared older and more mature now wearing a one piece black bodysuit. Her physical appearance had altered drastically with her hair being much longer and her eyes glowing purple.

"Don't worry sir, I'm going to get you out of here." She said in a much more calm and deep voice. She easily lifted the man up into her arms.

She looked at the state he was in though it was kind of hard to tell with the gasmask strapped over his face. He looked like a soldier of sorts, but the uniform he wore was completely unknown to her. His uniform consisted of grey camouflage shirt and pants with the shirt sleeves rolled up, black fingerless gloves on his hands and black combat boots on his feet. Over the uniform he wore a green and black ballistic vests with an assortment of pouches for what Purple Heart presumed was ammo. Finally on his face he wore a gas mask with green tinted lenses and a green camouflage helmet that matched the color of his vest.

Nearby where what she assumed were his weapons and gathered them together.

With the man and his weapons in her arms she flew out of the cave back up through the hole she had come from and hastily made her way out of the cave and rushing back to Planeptune to get the man immediate medical attention all the while being watched by a beast from the shadows.


	5. The Escape

**BEEP… BEEP… BEEP…**

Those were the first things to register to Adrian Shephard. He felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well he did feel something but it was all numb.

'Where am I?'

Adrian tried to open his eyes only to immediately shut them at the blinding white walls and lights. It took him a few moments but his eyes grew accustomed to the light and he was able to see.

He was in a room. Not just any room either. A hospital from the looks of it. On his right was the source of the beeping a life monitor. Looking down at his right arm there was an iv tube stuck in his wrist. He no longer wore his gear either he was instead wearing a patient's gown.

'The fuck happened?' It all came back to him. The osprey. The aliens. The cave. The trees.

Adrians eyes widened and looked down at his left forearm seeing that it was covered in a bandage.

'Oh jesus fuck what did that thing do to my arm!'

He tried to move his right hand to undo the bandage to see the damage but found whatever drugs he were on had made his body almost completely unresponsive.

'Okay Shephard calm down, calm down, I'm sure it can't be that bad right? I mean if were in a hospital then that means society is still standing and they must have gotten rid of whatever that alien did to me, right?'

His mind was saying yes, but his gut was saying nooooo, and if there's one thing he had learned throughout this whole ordeal was that his gut never lied.

Adrian lied his head back down on the pillow closed his eyes and took in a deep breath of the cool sterile air.

'AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!' he screamed in his head.

His mental screaming was halted when a voice from his right spoke. "Ah I see you are awake." It was soft and calm, something Shephard was not used to hearing considering his career choice.

Adrian looked over to his left and for a split second almost wanted to burst out laughing. He stared completely dumbfounded. He was now seeing a tiny lady with wings floating on a book. 'I've lost my fucking mind. I've finally lost it. Aliens, portals, giant spiders, golems, and now this. I knew I was crazy, I knew it.' Adrian looked away at the walls in front of him refusing to give the illusion any further acknowledgment.

"Excuse me, sir?" The illusion floated over to his bedside but he continued to refuse to show it any form of attention.

'Any moment now this will all go away.'

"Sir?"

'Any moment, I'll wake up and this will all just be some terrible dream that I'll share with the rest of the company and get a good laugh.'

"Sir!?" The illusion shouted floating up in front of his face.

He couldn't help but look at 'it' now.

"Your, not real." he finally spoke for the second time.

She looked at him questioningly. "What?"

"Your not real this is all just a bad dream that I'll wake up from any moment now and share with the rest of the company and get a good laugh." Adrian started telling himself closing his eyes. "Any moment now…" But when he opened his eyes the fairy thing was still there and he was still here.

"I am sorry to tell you sir that you are not dreaming and are in fact awake and alive." she said staring at him.

He shook his head. "Nope this all just a lucid dream that has gone on for far too long, any moment I'll-"

He was interrupted as the little fairy thing floated up and slapped him on the cheek. It felt more like a tap to him but it was oddly enough to bring him back to his senses. "Oh jesus fuck this is real, this is all real…" The heart rate on his monitor picked up and the world around Adrian began to swirl to the point he flat out passed out.

The little fairy sighed in defeat. "Why did I not expect this?"

 **ONE UNCONSCIOUSNESS LATER**

'Ugh fucking hell.' Adrian awoke once again still in the hospital room from before.

He recounted everything from prior including his encounter with that tiny book fairy lady. Adrians eyes widened and looked around the room. But he was alone thankfully.

It appeared the drugs had worn off seeing as his limbs were fully working and his body no longer felt numb. He felt like a million bucks.

Or half a million. He still felt a bit sore here and there along with the burning sensation on right forearm, but that was the norm for him. Lifting himself out of the bed Adrian had to rely on the bed for support in getting back on his feet.

It took a bit of work but after a few careful steps he was able to slowly walk about without using the bed for support. But there was nowhere he could go so long as he was still hooked up to the heart monitor.

Adrian looked at the monitor for a bit in search of way to disable the machine without setting of an alarm that would alert the hospital staff. It looked like it had an external battery on it incases of power failure.

Adrian carefully began fiddling with the buttons switches on the monitor until flipping a little blue switch that turned off the monitors screen.

'Huh well whaddya know, if all else just push shit until something happens…' Adrian chuckled to himself and pulled the iv tube out from his wrist along with the any other wires on his body. Now free to roam around without restriction he looked around for a mirror or bathroom, spotting a door in the corner of the room.

Walking over to it, it automatically slid open for him showing a small bathroom inside. He walked inside and went over to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. Staring back at Adrian was the young war torn face of a twenty-two year old marine with dark brown hair shaved to the scalp and tired dark green eyes.

'Well atleast my looks didn't go to shit. Heh.' He joked and then looked down at his bandaged forearm eyeing it carefully.

'God don't make me regret this.'

He started undoing the first layer of bandages doing it as slowly as possible so he didn't risk fucking up whatever they had done to his arm. The bandages fell into the sink, and underneath was a set of gauze pads that were taped around the entirety of his under forearm.

For a moment he thought he saw the gauze slightly move but ignored it.

'It's just gonna be a peak.' he told himself pulling the tape back. He was just gonna take a quick peek at the damage and then wrap it back up, it would look good as new. With the tape pulled off Adrian pulled the thick layer of bloodied gauze away giving him an eyeful of the damage of his forearm.

"Sweet mother of…" Adrian whispered to himself for a second he almost felt like he was going to pass out again but denied himself the right to do so.

Words could not describe the horror he was staring at. To anybody else it would of looked flat out disturbing but if the roles were reversed and it was on you, then you would have practically screaming in terror.

It was like the entire underside of his left forearm had been carved out like a pumpkin the rim was blood red flesh with blood oozing out. But what made this horrifying for the marine was the thing embedded inside. Inside his arm was the black carapace of that goddamn alien centipede from before.

It was inside his arm.

Adrian backed up against the wall and slid down it slowly until he was sitting on the bathroom floor with his left hand held in his right.

He looked up at the ceiling and did his best to calm down taking long deep breaths.

'Okay, okay Adrian calm the fuck down. Evaluate the situation. Your fuck knows where a wanted fugitive by the government with an alien parasite embedded in your arm, think. What do you do in these situations?' He had no clue what to do, everything that has happened up to this point has been some video game type of bullshittery and every hour more jaw dropping shit kept getting thrown in his direction to make things all the more worse for him.

'I have to get out of here.' He had to get out of this hospital he needed to get somewhere safe so he can try to wrap his head around what the hell was going on. And more importantly how to get this little bastard out of him before it did some weird alien type shit to his body. Plus it probably wouldn't be long before whoever's in charge would come to interrogate him and he didn't want to stick around for that.

Pulling himself to his feet Adrian went about reattaching the gauze pads and bandages to his forearm concealing the alien from view. He couldn't go walking around with an alien embedded in his arm, it would be to suspicious.

He left the bathroom and began looking around the hospital room. 'Okay how am I gonna get out of here…' he needed to get out of the room and locate his gear. But he doubted the nurses would take to kindly to a patient walking around unattended so he was going to get his hands on some nurses scrubs and find out what floor he was on.

With a sort of plan assembled Adrian walked over to the exit to the room and slowly peeked outside into the white walled corridors of the hospital. Seeing nobody in sight, he darted right down the corridor keeping a lookout for staff or potential cameras. You never know when a place could have cameras, always have to be alert for those kinds of things.

Adrian slowed down coming to a three way intersection. In front of him the corridor extended going down, while on his right was another. He began going over which path to take, continue moving forward or turn right.

'God its hard to think with that fucking telephone ringing!' The entire time he had been out of this room the only thing he had heard was the distant chatter of people and that god forsaken beeping telephone which was starting to get on his-

'That's it!' It hit him like like a brick. He didn't need to run around he could just follow the sound of the telephone to the maindesk of this floor.

Adrian tuned his hearing to listen for the sound of the telephone, it sounded like it was coming from on his right. His ears also picked up on a pair of distant footsteps behind him.

Moving quickly Adrian continued moving down the hall as quickly and quietly as possible dodging nurses and doctors that were in his path by hiding in the patient rooms. All of the one he came across were vacant thankfully.

Slowing to a crouch once more, Adrian peeked over the corner spotting his target. The reception desk.

'Shit, someones working it.' He had feared this would happen. Across from the reception desk were two sets of elevators, and in between them a map of the floor.

'Bingo.' now how was he going to get to it without that nurse seeing him? Looking around he spotted a door labeled 'Janitors closet'

Making his way over to it, Adrian found the door was locked by a keycard scanner. He fiddled around with it for a few seconds, but there was no way he was getting in without a card. 'Maybe the receptionist has a spare on them or their desk.'

But that brought back the question of how he was going to get over to the desk without being seen.

'Think Adrian think, your a marine you were trained for this kind of stuff.' Adrian looked around his environment for something to aid him in his predicament scanning every crevice of the area. He then looked at the nurse.

She was a pretty young woman somewhere around his age maybe a bit younger. He could go into detail about her looks but that's not what mattered. It was her face. She looked tired, extremely tired. She sat at the receptions desk with her head propped up against her hand on the desk, she was clearly having trouble keeping her eyes open as she blinked closing her eyes for more than a few seconds.

'Must be working the late shift, poor kid.'

Adrian watched as she took a sip from a small styrofoam cup which was filled with what he bet was coffee. He smiled when noticing the trash bin next to the desk filled with empty cups. He just needed her to leave to go get some more coffee. But he couldn't wait for her to finish the cup for all he knew it could be full and right now time was of the essence. He needed to get her away from the desk NOW.

From his experience back in basic training, sleep was a rarity so he knew exactly the pain this girl was feeling. But from his experience he also knew the effects of lack of sleep. One of those effects being almost completely oblivious to your surroundings something his drill sergeant screamed at him almost all week.

He just needed something of producing noise. Like a balloon or…

A pair of rubber gloves.

Adrian backed away and ran back down the corridor to one of the vacant rooms and looked around spotting a box of disposable gloves on the wall.

 **(Dunno if they just do that in my hospital but they have boxes of disposable gloves in the patients rooms.)**

Taking a glove from the box the marine made his way back to the corner where the nurse was still at the desk looking tired.

Adrian blowed up the glove to the point it looked on the verge of popping and waited for the nurse to take a sip from her cup.

 **POP**

He popped the balloon with his free hand making a loud pop that startled the nurse causing her to spill coffee all over her uniform. "Oh come on! Seriously?" She said to herself in disbelief looking at her dirty uniform. She huffed and stood up leaving the desk most likely to change uniforms.

With the desk now vacant Adrian ran over to it and began looking around for some sort of keycard. 'Come on they have to keep a spare around here somewhere.' he dug through drawers, shifted through papers, until finally finding a small white card in the bottom most drawer.

'I'm sure she won't miss this.' Adrian closed the drawer making sure to leave everything else as he found it.

With a keycard now in his possession Adrian made his way back to the janitors closet scanning the keycard on the scanner.

He was rewarded with a beep followed by the clunk of a lock being unlocked. He pulled on the knob and stepped inside closing the door behind him. Unlike the rest of the hospital the inside of the small closet was rather hot and musty reeking of what he assumed were cleaning chemicals. On either side of Adrian were two rows of shelves holding an assortment of cleaning supplies and equipment. But he was not interested in any of that.

His item of interest was a dark blue janitors jumpsuit which was found on a clothes hanger hanging from one of the shelves.

Adrian discarded his patients gown and put on the jumpsuit. It was a bit big but it was better than running around with his junk on full display for all to see. All he had to do was try to keep people from looking at his feet and realising he had no shoes.

'God did they have to take my boxers to?' Adrian rolled down the jumpsuits sleeves in order to conceal his bandaged arm. Didn't want anyone stopping to ask him about it, the less he conversed with the people the faster he found his shit and got out of here.

Grabbing a janitor trolley Adrian left the closet. If he was going to be walking around as a janitor he needed to act like one so what better way to walk around as a janitor than go around emptying garbage cans?

Adrian rolled out with the trolley and looked over at the desk. Some guy was working it now. Must be the girls replacement.

He wheeled the trolley over to the reception desk and reached down to pick up the bin dumping its contents into the trolley. He nodded to the nurse who nodded back looking more awake then his predecessor.

Adrian glanced over at the map taking in the information that was on it.

It looked like he was on the sixth floor shown by the number in the top left corner of the map right now he was at the center of the floor indicated by the red box. Now where would they possibly store patients items? If he had to guess that would be with security seeing that nobody walks out with someone else's stuff. But it didn't look like security was on this floor and that could be anywhere in the hospital and he didn't have time to run around. He needed to find his stuff and stat. (Pun may or may not have been intended, sue me)

Adrian placed the empty bin back in its place and wheeled the trolley away. He would slip into an elevator where nobody would see him, to risky doing it in front of someone else. He was able to walk past the staff without any of them so much as batting an eye at him or his bare feet seeing as they were more busy with work then him a janitor he was able to slip into an elevator without anyone noticing.

'Alright. What floor would security be on?' He looked at the elevator buttons. There were thirty floors in total. Adrian took a wild guess and pressed the lobby floor button. It would make sense if security was located on the first floor, that is the place with the heaviest traffic and most populated area if something were to happen it would most likely occur there.

'Alright this should be easy I just have to-'

"Wait! Hold the elevator!"

Shephard's eyes widened and he could see three girls running towards him.

'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!' Adrian began pressing the lobby floor repeatedly. 'Come on close you bastard!' the girls were getting closer and the door was taking forever to close.

Right as the door was about to close one of the girls jumped forward sticking her hand through the crack of the door stopping them from closing. Adrian sighed in defeat as the door opened again and the three girls got into the elevator with him.

The girl responsible for stopping the doors walked up and pressed the lobby floor.

'Of course…'

"Thanks for holding the elevator," one of the girls said sarcastically.

Adrian didn't bother replying and kept facing the door though stealing peeks at the three girls.

The first girl the one responsible for stopping the elevator, was a little girl with short purple hair and odd purple eyes. She wore a white hoodie with little hdmi cables for the draw strings.

The second girl the one who had called him out, was around the same height as the purple one. She had long brown hair with green eyes and a leaf in her hair. Her clothes consisted of a long blue overcoat with a belt holding a bunch of cellphones. 'Why did she need so many cellphones?'

The last girl who was a tad bit taller than the two of them had light peach colored curly hair and matching eyes. Despite her outfit being a sleeveless white sweater and skirt, she must of been a nurse of sorts as she had a red cross backpack at her side. 'Probably off duty.'

It didn't really matter to him, so long as they stayed out of his way he could care less.

The elevator began its descent and for Adrian it felt extremely slow. His eyes wandered down to his bare feet. He moved the trolly towards him a bit to hide his feet from the three.

"Sooooooo…" the purple haired girl spoke breaking the silence. "You a janitor?" she asked him.

He just nodded, "Yeah…"

"You didn't happen to see a patient running around did you?" Blue coat asked him rather casually. To casually…

"Nope, why?" Adrian kept a straight calm face lying to the girls.

Bluecoat studied his face for a few seconds, she almost seemed suspicious of him and that placed the marine on edge.

"Just wondering, seems one of the patients from the floor we were just on got up and left. Thought maybe you would have seen him."

Adrian shrugged his shoulders, "Nope sorry haven't seen him, but I'd alert the staff if I were you."

'Fuck, now they're gonna be looking for me. Have to get out of here fast.'

"Mister Janitor, why is your arm bandaged?" The pink haired girl asked innocently.

Adrian looked down at his arm seeing his left arms sleeve was up slightly exposing a bit of the bandage on his forearm. "Dog Bite," he lied on the spot before tugging the sleeve down concealing it once more. "Don't like to talk about it."

'Jesus how slow is this elevator!?'

No further questions were asked but he could feel bluecoat watching him like a hawk. The elevator came to an abrupt halt followed by a ding and the elevator doors sliding open.

"Have a fine day girl's," Adrian faked a smile wheeling the trolley out of the elevator.

'Now to find that fucking security room.' He needed to get out of here.

It took nearly ten minutes but with the help of some of the signs posted around he was able to find the security desk.

'Alright this is gonna be a tough one.' that wasn't an understatement these weren't tired nurses he was sneaking around, these were men trained to deal the unruly and to protect the public. They were armed and probably a lot more on guard. This was going to take a lot more planning and careful thinking to pull-

Adrian reached the desk and sitting at the security desk was a sleeping security guard with his hat placed over his eyes snoring rather loudly.

'I retract that previous statement…'

The security desk was a boxed off room with the front desk consisting of a wall of probably bulletproof glass with a small hole at the bottom probably for passing stuff through. On the side was a metal door with a keypad.

'Fucking great a keypad. Okay Adrian looks like your gonna have to pull a rabbit out of the hat for this one. How am I gonna get in there?' Adrian walked back to the window and looked around inside. 'If I was back in Black Mesa how would I have gotten in here?'

He scanned the security room behind the sleeping guard finding his answer was embedded inside the walls themselves. 'Son of a…'

 **FIVE MINUTES LATER**

If there was any place Adrian hated most it was New Mexico.

And right after that it was air vents.

'Come on you piece of shit come off already!' Adrian pushed at the vent with his bare hands laying on his stomach inside of a cramped and hot ventilation shaft. He was trying to avoid doing anything that could awake the guard and right now it was very tempting for him to not just kick the vent cover until it broke off.

'Come on, almost- aha!' the vent cover came loose and carefully Adrian pulled it inside placing it down softly next to him and crawled out of the vent and into the cool air conditioned security room.

'Sweet mother that feels good.' His jumpsuit was covered in various sweat stains and it took everything in his willpower to not just rip the suit off and bask in the air conditioner glory.

'Focus, focus marine, you need to get your stuff.' Adrian pulled himself together and began looking around the office quietly staying in a crouch so nobody who passed by the desk would see a sweaty man in janitor clothes snooping around.

To the left was another door this one looking for more fortified then the door entering the office, and from the looks of it there was no vent to get passed it. Inspecting the door closer it appeared to require a keycode and card in order to open it. He doubted his card would work on it, so that meant only one person could have it.

The marine looked over at the snoring guard. 'Oh boy.'

Looks like he was going to have to play interrogation. God he wished he would never of have to do this and to somebody innocent no less.

Now he wasn't trained to do interrogation but he was trained in how to survive it, and in knowing how to survive it you know how its done. He wasn't going to actually harm the guy but he was going to scare the living shit out of him into giving up the code.

Now he just needed a weapon to threaten him with…

Adrian looked around the office for something to use. 'That should do.' grabbing a letter opener off of the desk he made his way behind the unsuspecting sleeping guard. He needed to get him away from the window so he needed to be quick.

With the letter opener in his right hand Adrian used his left arm to wrap around the guards neck and push him along with the rolling chair away from the window out of sight of any passerbys. He quickly pressed the letter opener against the stirring guards throat.

The sleeping man jolted awake confused until feeling a sharp cold edge being pressed into his throat.

"Scream and I paint the walls of this office in your blood, got it?" Adrian whispered into the guards ear menacingly. The key here is to be as threatening as possible, the more they fear you the more likely they are to give in to your demands.

The guard quickly realized what was going on and nodded slowly eyes wide already beginning to sweat. "W-What d-do you want?" he stuttering nervously keeping his hands were they were. Good. Good.

"The passcode to that room over there, what is it?" He jerked his head over to the storage room.

"I-I don't know only the-" The guard was silenced by Adrian pushing the letter opener deeper into his neck. "Don't give me that bullshit, your the security guard that works this desk, of course you know the code don't play dumb with me. So talk." to get his point across he placed his left hand over the guards mouth and pulled the letter opener across his neck a little bit drawing a touch of blood.

It wasn't enough to kill him but he knew what was going on and screamed something into his hand.

"What was that?"

Adrian took his hand off the guards mouth allowing him to speak, "I-I said I may know the code its…"

"Hello!?" Adrian clamped his mouth back over the guards mouth and looked over at the window where the voice had come from. That voice. It sounded familiar. Adrian looked the security guard in the eye giving him a look that said. 'Don't try jack shit and play along.'

The guard understood his mental message and nodded.

Adrian slowly took pulled his hand away but kept the letter opener against his throat.

"Yes!?" The guard yelled doing his best to not sound nervous.

"We're here to report about a missing patient! We couldn't find him in his room and a janitor suggested we talk to staff about finding him!"

'Son of a bitch its them!' Adrian looked at the guard who stared at him in fear.

Adrian mouthed to him, 'Keep going.'

The guard looked back over at the window. "Well, uh thanks for telling me, I-I'll be sure to alert the rest of security and the staff to be on the lookout for a missing patient, thank you!"

'Good boy.'

Adrian listened to the fading footsteps of that blue coated girl and waited for a full minute before continuing his interrogation. "Alright I've wasted enough time, whats the code to the storage room?"

"Eight Five Two One. Its Eight Five Two One. I swear."

"Your sure?" Adrian said.

The guard nodded. "Yes, yes, im sure, and the keycards in my pocket."

"Thank you for your cooperation then." Adrian pulled the letter opener away from the guard throat and wrapped both his arms around his neck cutting off his oxygen supply. The guard started gagging and kicking grabbing at his arms in an attempt to break his grip but it was all in vain as he quickly fell unconscious.

'Well that could of gone better…' Adrian laid the unconscious guard down on the ground and rummaged through his pockets finding the keycard.

Adrian walked up to the keypad and punched in the code. The red light on the side of the keypad turned green. 'Good to see he didn't lie to me.'

He scanned the keycard and unlocked the storage room door.

Inside the storage room there were rows and rows of shelves all lined up together packed with metal storage containers containing what he guessed was patients stuff. Or atleast the patients who were rushed here and couldn't leave there possession with anyone. On the front of the boxes were a slip of paper with a letter and number.

'That must be the room numbers.'

 **(If you want to imagine something else go ahead but this was the best I could do)**

Adrian looked around going through the boxes numbers until eventually finding his. C-Five.

Lifting the crate off of the shelf with a grunt he placed it on the ground and undid the latches opening the crate revealing his gear all inside ziplock bags.

His uniform, his boots, his mask, his helmet, his…

'Wait a minute. Where is it?' Adrian dug around in the box frantically. 'Where the hell was it?! Where was his vest!?'

"Looking for this?" Adrian froze still like a statue. That voice again. He looked up slowly. To see that bluecoat girl and in her hands was his Powered Combat Vest.

'How did she? When did she? What!?'

Adrian stood up slowly eyeing the young girl who matched his gaze. "You know I knew there was something off about you, but when Compa called out your bandage I knew it was you. I just needed to confirm it."

"What do you want?" He had been caught and unless he wanted to kill a kid in order to escape he had nowhere to run. Plus something told him there was more to this girl then meets the eye.

"Easy you come with me…"

 **A/N: Welp thats a wrap kind of had fun writing this chapter honestly. Thought I would throw in a vent just as a nod towards a kickass scientist. Leave a review please I read them and they help motivate me.**


	6. The Meeting

**A/N: Kind of a short follow up to the last chapter. Not much.**

Okay he could confirm he was no longer on Earth. That was both good and bad. Good because he didn't have to worry about being hunted by the government and bad because he was in the unknown with no understanding or knowledge of this worlds culture. Now he should have been on the floor shaking telling himself that all this was just some sort of bad dream, but at this point he had pretty much seen it all.

"You know these are unnecessary right?" Adrian said bluntly referring to his zip tied wrists.

It had been thirty minutes since his capture and to say his captors were quite the questionable bunch was well…

"Wow coooooool night vision!" The little purple haired girl next to him was playing with his gas mask holding it up to her face going through the metal container containing his stuff.

'How the fuck do I end up captured by kids?'

"Well you brought that on yourself after trying to make a run for it." the brown haired girl IF said coldly.

'Yeah and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling nurse and her giant syringe. Seriously who needs a syringe that big!?' Thankfully he wasn't stabbed with it, rather she just whacked him to the ground.

The three girls along with their 'prisoner' were currently in an elevator going up to some massive tower. Adrian looked out the glass window showing the alien city all lit up in the night. He wouldn't deny it was beautiful, but he was more of an outdoors guy preferring the rural and open wilderness over the hustle and bustle of the big city.

While he was busy staring out at the city, he felt a tug on the sleeve of his stolen jumpsuit and looked down to see the purple girl looking up at him with his mask in her hand and something in the other. "Whats this?" she asked like a child holding up his dog tags.

'God does this kid have to go through peoples shit without permission?'

"My tags." He simply said.

The girl hummed and read them outloud. "Sheperd, Adrian, M."

"Its Shephard." He corrected.

She smiled "Tomato tomoto, its whatevs."

'Weird kid.'

The elevator came to a halt and the doors slid open.

IF looked up from her phone and looked at him, narrowing her eyes. He rolled his and walked out of it followed by the three of them.

Adrian internally whistled at the sight of the penthouse like room. It was nice, certainly nicer than anything he could ever afford.

"HISTY WE'RE BACK!" Purple screamed making him cringe.

'Ever heard of inside voices?'

A soft and familiar voice from around the corner spoke up. "Where have the three of you been its nearly midnight did you get anything from the- Oh…"

'It's the fucking fairy with the floating book from earlier! Shit that was real!'

Him and the fairy locked eyes silently staring at one another. She eventually broke the silence. "Its you…from earlier."

Adrian just nodded, "Yeah, guess I haven't lost my mind just yet…" This felt awkward for the marine though he didn't know why.

He noticed she wasn't staring at him and traced her eyes to his left arm.

His eyes widened in realization. Did she know?

"You think maybe we can take these binds off, they're kind of starting to hurt my wrists…" he said wanting to keep the conversation away from his unwanted parasite.

'Histy' as the purple haired girl had called her looked back up at him and down at his wrists.

"IF? Why is he binded?" she asked the brown haired girl who had been silent for the entirety of the conversation thus far.

"He took a guard hostage with a letter opener when he was trying to escape the hospital and attempted to run away when we were bringing him here."

The fairy looked back up at him with wide eyes. Adrian was quick to defend himself. "In my defense I had no intention to actually kill the guy, just draw a bit of blood to get the code to my stuff."

Histy's mouth moved trying to formulate a sentence but failed miserably until sighing in defeat. "Just release him please."

IF did so without question despite the angry glare she was giving him. A large blade extended from within her coat sleeve and sliced the binds holding his wrists captive in one fluid motion. Adrian rubbed his wrists, "Thanks."

She said nothing back.

"Now then Mister-" Histy started.

"Shephard. Adrian Shephard."

She nodded, "Mister Shephard perhaps you would like something to drink or eat, I imagine after everything you have been through you would be rather peckish." she was trying to sound so formal and Adrian found it rather adorable. That being said he was pretty hungry he hadn't eaten since… when was the last time he ate? Jesus had he been fighting for days without food? Someone get him a medal.

"That would be nice." He said accepting her hospitality.

Histy looked over at Compa, "Compa would you mind getting our guest something to eat?" she asked the nurse politely. She nodded happily walking to the kitchen while the fairy led Adrian to the living room gesturing for him to take a seat on the couch.

He looked around admiring the beautiful living room and the large plasma screen tv.

'God it would be amazing to watch sports on that. Wonder if they have football here.'

As he was admiring the large tv he had completely forgotten about his host who watched him for a little while as he just stared at their tv. After a full minute she decided to get the conversation back on track and cleared her throat catching his attention.

"Mister Shephard if I may-"

"Shephard. Just Shephard is fine it's what everyone calls me." Or did call him but they were all either silenced or scorched from a nuclear blast.

"Shephard…" She corrected. "If I may ask, what is it you do for a living?"

Adrian thought on it for a moment keeping himself cool and relaxed, didn't want to look like he was hiding something in an interrogation for thats what this was an interrogation despite how nice she's been to him thus far.

"A soldier." he said bluntly.

"A soldier for Planeptune, Lastation….?"

"A private military company. Revealing the name would be a breach of contract." He lied but kept note of what she had just said. Planeptune and Lastation must've been countries of this world.

"That is understandable mister- I mean Shephard, do you know how you ended up in your current ummm…" her eyes wandered down to his left arm again. "State?"

"That depends."

"E-excuse me?" she was caught off guard.

Adrian looked the fairy directly in her blue eyes noting the sudden nervousness. "That depends on whether or not you would have me dissected like a lab rat." she definitely knew her reaction said it all.

"I-I would n-never do such a thing!" she defended shaking her head.

Adrian couldn't help but snort, "Please tell that to my previous employers who had me do all their dirty work only to try and put a bullet in my head, believe me I ain't blind." Having been hunted by his own government after doing the dirty work of silencing civilians only to backstab him in the end by sending black ops to silence him and his buddies too, Adrian wasn't so trusting of bureaucracy anymore.

"Mister Shephard you have my assurance I would never hand you off as a quote 'lab rat' I promise you." she was trying to reassure him, but he was buying none of it.

"I want to know why you had my vest."

"Your vest?"

"Yeah my vest, why did your little lacky have it?"

"Hey!" IF yelled listening to their conversation

They bother ignored her and continued staring at each other.

"Well you see one our engineering experts took an interest in your vest seeing as it was completely foreign and new, and…" she trailed off.

"So you used your governmental powers or whatever you are to get access to my stuff from the hospital and take my vest…" Technically his governments vest but he was keeping that after everything they put him through so fuck them.

"I suppose that is a bit of a broad way to put it but…"

"Histoire, I finished doing my scans on that vest like you asked me to!" A girl walked into the room with a bunch of papers in her hands. She looked almost similar to the other purple haired girl. Only taller and with longer hair. She wore a sort of sailors outfit. But this was the kid she had given his vest to?!

Adrian looked back at the fairy frowning. "Experts huh?"

The new girl looked at him and her, "I-is this a bad time? I can come back later if you like." she said nervously. Histoire nodded. "That would be for the best Nepgear."

The girl known as Nepgear backed out of the room.

"You know your not making a very good first impression," Adrian crossed his arms looking back at Histoire.

She sighed and closed her eyes. "I am aware of that, thank you for stating the obvious." she said annoyed.

"So what do you want with me? It's clear you want something out of me so spill it." He rested his back against the couch and stretched his legs out. Time he got down to business.

Histoire's eyes darted around the room warily suddenly her whole calm and collected demeanor shattering, she seemed on edge and almost 'afraid?'. She floated towards him creeping Adrian out more than it should have, she leaned in eyes still searching the room and in a low voice spoke, "I know you are tied to something 'outlandish' that thing on your arm is proof enough, but lately I have begun to feel things. Unnatural things that not even I can explain, and the timing of your appearance along with that creature inside of you leads me to believe you are somehow involved with these feelings and I need your help finding out what it is."

Adrian raised an eyebrow, did that mean she knew he was an alien? And more importantly what was she getting on about him being tied to 'outlandish' things? "Ooooookay? And why not have your people or whoever look into it why do you need me a total stranger?"

She continued to look around, "I fear whatever it is, may be something out of my understanding and to powerful even for the CPU's to handle. This 'Thing' it is beyond anything I have ever felt. It was so brief yet so strong and every now and then it would appear again always stronger."

"And you think because of my arrival and this parasite, I may be tied to it?"

Histoire nodded, "I need someone I can trust to look into this for me and I don't know why but I feel like I can trust you. Please I fear this power may be something that can threaten all of Gamindustri if not stopped and I doubt the combined powers of the CPU's will be enough to fight it."

She was practically begging him for help and Adrian found himself in an uncomfortable position. On one hand he really had no business here he was just thrown here by that prick in the suit and tie, so technically he had nothing to do with anything that went down here. But on the other hand could he deny the request of a tiny fairy lady trying to protect the world from possible chaos?

Adrian looked up and sighed, "Fine. I'll look into this 'power' for you but I want something in return."

"Anything." She immediately said showing him how desperate she truly was.

He began listing off his demands such as a place to stay and an income along with a few other things.

Normally he would feel bad for demanding pay and a place to stay but after all the shit he had to do he felt like he deserved at least some compensation for all bullets and lighting balls he had to take to the face.

"You have a deal Mister Shephard." Histoire said smiling in relief. But that smile disappeared when that feeling came to her again. There was no true way to describe what it was like, but everytime she felt it she tensed and would begin to shake. Just as quickly as it came it disappeared. But histoire still shook at the feeling, it continued to get worse and something told her if it wasn't stopped soon unforeseen consequences will be put upon them all.

 **MEANWHILE**

In the dark night of Virtua Forest all was silent save for the chirping of the nocturnal insects and howls of the owls.

Within the trees a creature darted from tree to tree jumping from branch to branch followed by a beam of light that chased after it followed by multiple hurried footsteps that chased after the large figure from the ground. "Come on don't let it get away!" a man's voice shouted.

Three hunters chased after the large creature that was actively trying to flee them. They were barely able to keep up as the creature was extremely intelligent using the cover of the night to outwit them.

"W-what kind of monster is this!?" A girl with a bow huffed doing her best to keep up with the rest of her party. She had expected the creature to be dangerous considering the reward for the quest was higher than any S class mission she had seen the guild offer before.

But this 'monster' had not even made a single attempt to fight back let alone attack them and it actively used its environment to outmaneuver them or to throw them off. This was completely the opposite of how other monsters acted, could this be something new?

"Don't know and don't care, the Guild is paying good money for anyone who can kill it and I intend for us to be the ones to collect the reward." Their leader said.

Not much was known about the monster, but from the reports it said the beast was responsible for break ins to multiple homes all across Gamindustri. Not a single person was harmed but some people reported missing food primarily fruit and the same description. A large creature that flees into the night after being spotted. This was enough to get the Guilds attention and put out a bounty on the mysterious beast, many hunters would try to take it down but it always escaped. Overtime the bounty would grow and grow as more hunters would come after it and fail.

Unknowingly to everyone on Gamindustri a clock was ticking.

 **A/N: So I was originally gonna exclude pairings for Adrian since you know hes twenty two and by writing a pairing between him and a bunch of girls who barely look out of puberty would land me on the fbi watchlist. But fuck it tell me who you would want him paired with, and for the love of all things happy and smiling please be someone over the age of 18 or atleast looks it.**


	7. Learning the Ropes

God it felt so good to be back in his clothes and out of that fucking jumpsuit. It was morning now and Adrian was lacing his boots. He had crashed on the couch thanks to his new 'employer' offering him a temp place to stay in the basilicom as they called it until he could save up the money to buy his own place. Until then he was stuck sharing a roof with the kids who lived here.

That reminds him he needs to look into this worlds culture and history. He had no fucking clue about this place at all and asking Histoire would probably make her suspicious about who he was.

Did she know he was an alien. From their conversation last night it sure sounded like she knew. But maybe she didn't. Meh better to play it safe.

With his combat boots laced up Adrian stood up and began putting on his PCV.

With everything save for his gas mask and helmet on, Adrian walked out of the living room that was his temporary bedroom and went to the kitchen.

Inside he found the nurse from last night. Compa was her name. She was standing at the stove clearly cooking something she looked over smiling at Adrian.

"Goodmorning. Breakfast is almost ready." She chirped happily.

"Uh, thanks?" He said taking a seat at the table. He had no problem cooking his food for him but he wasn't exactly trusting of these people yet. Especially that IF girl, him and her are gonna have a rough relationship he could already tell.

Compa walked over with a plate in her hands and placed it down in front of him. He looked down at it and cringed at the sight of what appeared to be burnt disks resembling pancakes. Adrian picked up a fork and lightly touched the edge of the pancake watching as it crumbled like ash.

"Y-you know C-Compa I dont think Im really that hungr-" He started but stopped when he saw the puppy dog eyes Compa was giving him, she looked like she was on the verge of crying.

'Goddamnit.' He may have been a marine and fought countless aliens and black ops soldiers, but even he couldn't resist the adorable puppy dog eyes. 'Okay Shephard, just remember bootcamp you've ate worse.' He thought to himself stabbing his fork repeatedly into the burnt pancake until finally getting it driven through and picked it up.

"I am a man…" he whispered biting a chunk of the pancake off and began chewing on it as Compa watched happily with her hands clasped in anticipation. 'The things I do for people.'

It was like eating a rock and that wasn't an understatement it was like trying to eat a literal rock. He did his best to chew the pancake as much as possible and swallowed, suppressing the urge to gag as the bits of the pancake got stuck in his throat. "I-" he coughed "Its great, I- Oh dear god." he muttered grabbing his chest bursting into coughing fits, he quickly stood up and bolted for the sink turning on the faucet and sticking his mouth to it.

As Adrian was busy washing down the hard bits of overcooked pancakes trapped in his throat a certain purple haired girl walked in.

"Gooooood Mooooorning, Nep-Gang!" **(My unofficial Name for Neptunes party)**

"Good morning Nep-Nep," Compa greeted. "I made breakfast."

Adrian pulled his mouth away from the faucet gulping for air.

Neptune looked at him and then the plate of burnt disks and her eyes widened just as wide as the pancakes themselves. She was thinking what he was thinking, and right now Adrian saw a way to get out of this meal.

"You know I'm not really that hungry Comp-ahhhh!" She was suddenly picked up by the marine who walked over to his original seat and placed her down in it. "I'm not really that hungry, so why don't you have my plate?"

Pushing her chair in he placed his pancakes in front of her. "Is that okay with you?" he looked at Compa who was still smiled. "Sure, plus she can have the rest I made!"

"H-Hey don't I the main character get a say in this conversation?! I mean I'm not really that hungry eithe- Oof!" Neptune was again shut up this time by her chair being pushed in forcefully hitting her stomach against the edge of the table.

She looked up at Adrian holding the back off her chair and he tilted his head towards Compa. She looked at her and was immediately affected by the infamous sad Compa puppy eyes, not even she could resist such power. Neptune sighed in defeat. "Fine." Compa's mood did a complete threesixty and went back to cheerful as she grabbed the pan of burnt pancakes and walked over putting them on the plate in front of Neptune atop all the others he didn't eat.

Adrian left the room as quickly as he could not wishing to stick around for the girl to offer him something else. How do you burn something so bad it was practically stone?

So his plans for today. Histoire had no jobs for him yet, but from their talk last night she suggested he check out a place called the Guild. From her explanation it was like a place for mercenaries to take on jobs for money hunting 'monsters' and that was something right up Adrians alley. So he was going to check it out. Secondly was finding out more about this world he was in, if he was going to survive here and keep a low profile he was going to need to educate himself to blend in with the locals. And the best place for that was a library.

Of course with every plan or every action for that matter there was a downside. He was going to have to ask someone to come with him seeing as he had no fucking clue to navigating this city. He had grown to be more of a lone wolf and being escorted around by a girl that was probably half his age was low even for him. But sometimes you do what you gotta do.

Question was who would he have go with him.

He would ask Histoire seeing as she is his employer, but she seemed like a busy fairy considering whatever her position in the government here was. Their was that IF girl from last night she seemed rather quiet, not to talkative which was a one up for him considering he didn't like talking either but then again they didn't exactly trust each other as of yet.

Then there was Neptune. No fuck that. Just no. That girl was going to drive him to insanity with her voice. He'd rather have Sergeant Barnes screaming in his ear everywhere he went than listen to her for a whole day.

'What about that Nepgear girl?' He thought to himself and frowned.

He hadn't really spoken to her at all since meeting her last night when she barged in during his and Histoires conversation. But from what he could tell she was pretty relaxed and didn't seem so energetic as her younger sister. Were they sisters?

Well it wasn't like he had many other options. 'Fuck it.'

He ran around the floor in search of the girl going from room to room looking for her. On his past the kitchen Adrian peeked in to see Compa was performing the heimlich maneuver on a choking Neptune.

'She'll be fine…' He thought and continued his search knocking on door after door.

He reached the final door on the floor and knocked on it a few times.

"Its open!" a voice yelled.

With permission to enter Adrian opened the door and nearly gagged at the sight of the pink walls and bright colors. It was like a girls absolute dream room, and that was fine FOR GIRLS. To him it was an eyesore, that almost felt like had destroyed a bit of his soul.

Across the room sat Nepgear at a desk that was filled with papers and the walls a top it with blueprints of what looked like his vest and guns. Was he really that alien that his guns were interesting to them? Like he could understand the vest seeing as it did miracles to save his ass back in the field, but his weapons?

'Must not be that advanced in the field of firearms. I guess.'

Nepgear looked away from the piles of papers and nearly fell out of her chair but caught herself on the edge of the desk.

"M-Mister- uh…"

"Shephard. Adrian Shephard." he told her.

"Mister. Shephard. C-can I help you?" she asked nervously.

Adrian looked around the room a bit more finding nothing that interested him. "I was coming to uh see if you would mind showing me the way to the library around here. Seeing as I've never been to this city before." he told her.

It took her a few seconds for her understand what he was saying but nodded nonetheless. "Yeah, yeah sure just give me-" she stopped to yawn and rub her tired eyes. "Just give me a few minutes to freshen up then I'll show you around."

He nodded and left the room.

'Well that went well.' He told himself and leaned against the wall next to the door and waited for Nepgear. As he stood their he looked down at his vest and noticed his tactical radio clipped to one of his vests straps. It was a small handheld radio no bigger than the size of his palm, with a little yellow screen and a bunch of buttons beneath it.

'I wonder.' he grabbed the radio and turned it on and began tuning through the channels to see if he could pick up anything. The thing was useless in terms of long range which was why he never used it back in Black Mesa, it was used mainly just to keep in contact with squadmates or other friendlies who may be nearby. So in terms of long range communication it was useless unless there was a transmitter or receiver to pick it up.

As expected he got absolutely nothing. To be expected, not like he was gonna pick up the locals military radio frequency. Or his own…

The door beside Adrian opened and out stepped Nepgear appearing somewhat more composed then earlier. "Ready?" she said smiling.

He nodded clipping his radio back onto his vest and followed her to the elevator. Peeking into the kitchen one final time to check on Compa and Neptune. She was passed out on the floor with Compa wrapping the entirety of her body in bandages. 'She'll be fine.'

With that he followed Nepgear into the elevator and went down to the lobby floor of the tower, neither of them saying a word to one another until reaching the streets. Adrian placed his mask on his face watching as the green hud lit up in his vision displaying his health and weapons along with all the ammo on him.

"Where was it you wanted me to show you exactly?" Nepgear asked looking up at him seeing as she just about reached up to his chest.

"Library." he told her and she nodded leading the marine.

As they walked Adrian studied the alien city and its inhabitants closely taking in everything around him. The people of this world were almost if not completely human along with some of their technology being similar to his world only far more advanced. Holographic billboards, touch screen phones, etc. It was like something straight out of a sci-fi film.

 **(It was like the late 90s in Adrians timeline so touch screen devices hardly existed then)**

The city was oddly obsessed with the color white, seeing as all their buildings were made from white metal and glass which made it slightly hard for Adrian to see. The peoples clothes on the other hand were somewhat normal so there wasn't much for him to find out of the norm. The same couldn't be said the same for him though as he got some odd looks from passersby, mainly the ladies who eyed him longer than even he would have felt comfortable with.

Now he wasn't dense he knew exactly why they were eyeing him and it didn't bother him in the slightest he was used to this kind of reaction from women especially back home, but to be completely honest he never had any experience in the fields of dating and the few people he told that to back in his company were legit surprised always saying he looked like someone who would have played football in high school or something and truth was he didnt do that either. He just didn't care for dating or any recreational activities, never really had time for that kind of stuff preferring to be doing something that was worthwhile in the long run. The most of Adrians childhood was spent either bonding with his dad who taught him to use and clean guns or hunting snakes out in the nearby forest.

Adrian smiled remembering his mom always lecturing to him about doing 'normal boy things' like hanging out with friends.

"Mister Shephard?"

"Huh?" Adrian looked around until looking down at Nepgear who looked up at him questioningly.

"I asked, why are you wearing your mask?"

Adrian replied with a shrug, "I feel more comfortable with it on." and that was the truth. Since Black Mesa he was gonna keep this thing on wherever he went, especially now since he was in an alien environment where anything could happen to him even if things seemed 'safe' right now.

"If you dont mind me asking mister Shephard, um-" Nepgear pointed the two ends of her index fingers together and looked at the ground while he looked down at her as they walked.

"What?"

"Nothing nevermind." She said.

He had no idea what to say or do in this situation. So he just let it go.

The rest of their journey was made in silence until reaching the library.

"Well we're here." Nepgear said leading him to the steps of the library, which was fairly small compared to the other buildings Adrian had seen.

"Thank you ma'am your help is appreciated." He told her and proceeded up the steps to the library but stopped halfway up when hearing footsteps behind him. He looked behind him to see the girl was following him.

"Is there something I can help you with?" He asked her. Had he not made it clear he no longer needed her help? He was sure he could find a map or something to find his way to the guild.

"Well it's just… Umm. I need to go inside to look at something. Yeah that's it." She said rather nervously unable to make direct eye contact with him.

'God please don't tell me she has some kind of crush.'

He just nodded, "Okay then…" he proceeded up the steps and entered the library to begin his research on this alien world and its history.

 **MEANWHILE**

"What do you mean they left!?"

IF was pacing back and forth in front of Compa and a mummified Neptune lying on the couch who was trying her hardest to escape the thick layer of bandages wrapped around her body.

"Sheppy and G-G left a while ago while I was helping save Nep-nep from choking." Compa told IF.

"Well where did they go!?" IF yelled scaring Compa a bit. Realising what she was doing she lowered her voice and stopped pacing around. "Do you know where they could have gone?"

She didn't trust this Shephard guy, he gave off a bad vibe that didn't sit well with the guild agent and if Nepgear was with him then that was enough to place her on alert. They needed to find out where they went and find them quickly. Just to make sure he didn't do anything to her.

Neptune attempted to say something but all that came out was a muffled voice obstructed by the bandages wrapped around her mouth. IF sighed and used her blade to slice the bandages covering Neptune off allowing her to breath.

"Finally!" Neptune sat up yelling and gasping for air ripping the remaining bandages off. "I said that guy ditched me to go with Nepgear to the library!"

IF raised an eyebrow. "And how did you know that?"

Neptune smiled, "My dearest Iffy you oughta know that no fourth wall will ever be enough to keep the great protagonist of protagonists out. Plus this is to get back at the author for not including enough of dear little me in the story!"

 **(I blame myself for this.)**

"And you should!" Neptune yelled at the sky engaging in an argument with seemingly no one in particular. Looking completely out of it to IF and Compa.

 **BACK TO ADRIAN**

He had spent about an hour reading up on history and browsing through various books pertaining to the world and its inhabitants and he had somewhat of a grasp on the understanding of this world now.

This world he was in was called Gamindustri and on it were four main nations. The one he was in being Planeptune, a bit of a tongue twister if you asked him. The other three consisted of Lastation, Leanbox, and Lowee. Apparently the four nations were lead by what were presumed deities called CPUs. Adrian was unable to finding anything that delved into explaining what exactly CPU's were but from the sounds of it the people worshipped them as gods of some sort while they ruled over the nations.

Adrian had also looked into what their military was like but found absolutely nothing, not so much as a hint that they even had a military to begin with. No battles, no invasions, nothing. Except for the mention of some sort of fighting between the four gods, but even then there was no mention of humans fighting each other.

This led the marine to believe this world was completely without a proper military. Perhaps their gods protected them. This was both interesting and worrisome to Adrian. A world without conflict between humans meant their had to be little to no bloodshed in this world, but this also worried him.

His thoughts roamed back to the discovery of the inactive worm portal. If the aliens had managed to come to this world then it was possible for an invasion to occur and without a military to protect the people they were sure to lose as he doubted even four of these supposed gods could fend off an entire dimensions worth of terraforming aliens.

That brought up two other issues.

Adrian placed the book he was reading down on the table and looked down at his bandaged arm which frankly looked ready for a change.

The parasite. What was it? He had never seen it back in Black Mesa so this thing was a complete mystery to him. And it certainly wasn't a native. If the aliens had been to this world were they still around? He sure hoped not but hoping wasn't going to do much.

He needed to know if they were here and if so where are they? Maybe plotting an invasion? It was possible. And if that was the case he needed to stop them before they could invade or else this world was going to meet the fate Earth had narrowly avoided. Maybe they were tied to these feelings Histoire had said she had been having. He would have to talk to her about that as soon as he got back.

Adrian closed the book he was reading and placed it a top all the other books he had skimmed through and stood up from his chair.

He was done here he had found everything he needed to know. A few tables down was Nepgear who was reading some sort of book on mechanical parts though really she was watching him from behind the book. He found it adorable how she tried to hide it when he would look in her general direction.

 **(Just a reminder to leave your ideas for who to pair Adrian with. Preferably someone within his age range but it's up to you.)**

He knocked on the desk getting her attention and like usual she immediately melted in her chair looking up at him. "Y-yes, mister Shephard?" she asked nervously. "I am done, we can leave now." He informed her and she nodded closing the book and setting it aside.

The two of them left the library.

"Where to now?" Nepgear asked.

"The guild, Histoire recommended I check it out." He told her. She nodded and smiled.

"Follow me then, I know the way. I go their for work often."

Adrian raised and eyebrow under his mask, "Really?" She did mercenary work? How did a kid slay monsters for money? Well he shouldn't really act so surprised considering he was saved by that Neptune girl from what Histoire had told him.

Nepgear nodded, "Of course, it is my job after all."

He nodded following Nepgear, while they were followed by three other girls.

After a bit of walking they arrived at another building this one much larger than the library. They walked through the sliding glass doors and Adrian almost whistled at the sight of all the holographic screens and high tech gadgets.

"So this place, is for mercenaries correct?" Adrian asked looking at one of the pillars which was surrounded by holographic screens with a bunch of technical stuff he didn't understand.

"I mean I wouldn't say it's mercenary work, it's more like public service." Nepgear explained walking over to a terminal.

'Public service in killing monsters for money.'

He watched as the girl typed something in on the computer and pulled out a small handheld phone that she plugged into a small port on the side of the terminal. "Have you never been to the guild before?" she asked as he walked up next to her to get a closer look.

"First time." he confirmed.

She nodded, "then maybe we should start with an easy quest."

'Is she underestimating me?' He felt a little hurt.

After a minute of playing with the console she unplugged her phone device and placed it in her skirt pocket. "All done." she smiled.

'That quick to get a job? You'd think monster hunting would require a background check and license. Eh maybe she has a license. Why would someone as young as her have a monster hunting license?'

He followed after Nepgear.

 **MEANWHILE**

"Where are they going now Iffy?" Compa asked IF who was watching Shephard and Nepgear leaving the guild.

"I think they're taking on a quest maybe so he can lure her out of the city." she said watching the man suspiciously.

Neptune who was hiding underneath a box and wearing a black bandanna wrapped around her head peeked out "But to what!? Aha another case for-!"

 **(Fuck off I'm done with that bit!)**

Before she could finish her sentence IF grabbed the box and threw it away leaving Neptune on her hands and knees looking like a complete idiot for all to see. "Nooo my cover!" she cried.

"Will you focus!? Your sister is possibly in danger!" IF exclaimed.

Neptune frowned placing her hands on her hips, "Oh come on Iffy your acting overdramatical. I mean, what has this guy done to make you so scared?"

"Well…" IF paused. Why was she so suspicious of this guy? Well other than the fact he had taken a security guard hostage she really had nothing to make her think he was a bad person, but she couldn't help shake this feeling that he was hiding something. Like there was something he was trying to keep secret from them, call it a sixth sense but she could tell when someone was holding back.

"Ummm Iffy?" IF was pulled from her thoughts by Compa who was waving her hand in her face. Crap had she blacked out for a moment?

"Huh? Wah?" IF asked looking around.

"Sheppy and G-G are gone." This snapped IF from her trance.

"Crap!"

 **BACK TO ADRIAN**

Adrian along with Nepgear had left the city and were now in the forests not to far off from Planeptune.

"So why are we here exactly?" he asked walking alongside her with his beretta drawn having left his mp5 back at the tower. He actively scanned the brush around them for any signs of contact. Nepgear did the same but instead of a gun wielded a laser sword wherever the hell she had been storing it was lost on him.

"The quest says for us to kill five dogoos in Virtua Forest, personally a good starter quest for you if your new to the guild."

'Dogoos?' Where had he heard that before? Adrian's ears picked up nearby movement and raised his fist in the air stopping Nepgear in her tracks. She looked up at him and he pointed at himself then waved his open hand left and right.

She looked at him confusingly and then he remembered she didn't know military hand signals. "Get behind me." he whispered to her and she did following his instructions without a word.

Adrian crept forward with his gun raised at the direction of the noise. Whatever it was it was coming towards them as the rustling grew louder and louder. He wrapped his finger around the trigger and waited.

A rabbit burst out through the foliage and hopped past the two of them. Thanks to Adrian's disciplined trigger finger he was quick enough to register the rabbit was not a threat and stopped himself from pulling the trigger and wasting a round.

"Shephard lookout!" Nepgear yelled making him whirl around right before being punched by a force that threw him back a few feet and landing on his back.

'Shit! An ambush!?' Adrian's vision was blurry slightly but he could make out the figure of Nepgear and a small blue blob that was standing next to his original position along with more emerging from the foliage.

"Shit! Nepgear get awa-!" he was going to warn Nepgear to get away from the jelly dog but watched as the young girl with her sword in hand sliced the blue blob in half in just one swing killing it.

Pulling himself to his feet he picked up his gun and moved to assist her, firing at the approaching swarm. His bullets did some damage to the creatures but unlike in his first encounter with them the bullets did not obliterate them like before.

'Shit did they get stronger?'

Adrian fired round after round at the monsters some eventually succumbing to the bullets and disintegrating while others died leaving behind a mess of blue jelly. While Nepgear was cutting them down swiftly and with precision that he never knew she even had.

He emptied his magazine and holstered his beretta switching to his knife instead and charged in to assist stabbing at the Dogoos and kicking back the others that got to close. But for each one they killed two more appeared, and it became apparent that they were getting overwhelmed as Nepgear was slowly being surrounded by the doggos who gave off an odd feeling of perversion towards her.

"Fucking hell where are they all coming from!?"

One jumped on his back and began hitting him with its blobby body. He reached up grabbing it and throwing it down on the ground in front of him and stomping it to a paste.

"I-I dont-!" Nepgear swung her sword slicing a dogoo midair as it lunged at her. "They usually don't travel in groups this large, the only time they would do that is when…"

"DOGOOOOOOO!" A deep voice spoke followed by the loud thumping of something behind them. All the other dogoos around them backed off allowing Adrian to turn around to see the giant monstrous Dogoo that was before them.

"A Grand Dogoo is nearby…" Nepgear finished both of them taking a step back.

Adrian looked down at his knife then back up at the large Dogoo. There was no way he was going to be able to kill that with a knife and they sure as hell were not running seeing as they were surrounded.

"Any ideas?" He asked.

No response.

Adrian looked over to his right at Nepgear who had her eyes closed for some reason. 'What the hell? Was she giving up already?'

Before he could say anything a bright flash of light blinded Adrian making him and the Dogoos back up and close their eyes. Adrians vision quickly cleared and…

'What the fucking fuck!?'

Were Nepgear stood was a totally other girl that looked almost similar to her.

She was around the same height with long pink hair and glowing eyes with pupils in the shape of power symbols. Her outfit consisted of a revealing white one piece suit and in her hands was a large sword.

"W-What the fuck!?" Adrian asked completely confused once more. Everytime when he thinks he's seen it all more shit keeps popping up to prove him wrong. The transformed Nepgear ignored him and raised her sword at the Grand Dogoo, and charged forward without so much as a word being said.

He was unable to watch the fight though as the other Dogoos who had surrounded them turned to him seeing him as an easy target while the girl was fighting their leader. Adrian looked at the dogoos moving in on him and pulled out his wrench taking in his free left hand while his right still held his knife.

'So thats how its gonna be huh? Alright.' Adrian growled and charged forward into the fray preparing for the fight of his life. Well not really that goes to the worm, but this was probably gonna be a little less tough.

Adrian neared the horde and raised his wrench and knife ready to strike at the first Dogoo that got in his way.

"Make way for the protagonist! Woohoo!" A familiar voice behind him shouted followed by a purple blur zooming past him.

It was Neptune.

And she had a giant fucking sword that was bigger than her.

She charged into the horde swinging her sword cutting into the mass of monsters. Following behind Neptune was IF and Compa. Compa had a large syringe which she was using to stab and hit Dogoos with while IF was slicing down dogoos with her wrist blades.

'Shit the grand Dogoo!' He had forgotten about Nepgear and the large Dogoo who were fighting in the middle. He needed to help her. But how? All he had was a knife, a wrench, and a pistol. Those weren't going to do shit against a large jelly mass, he needed something like an explosive.

'Like a grenade…'

God how did he completely forget about that!? He grabbed the grenade off of his belt and looked at Nepgear fighting the large beast.

She was faring fairly well dodging the dogoos attacks and returning back with her own. But from the looks of it she was making little to no progress in terms of killing it. Well he had the key to speeding up that process. He just needed to get it inside…

'Alright fatso dinner time then.'

Adrian ran forward towards the dogoo with the grenade in his hand pulling the pin on it and holding his hand on the grenades lever. Nepgear saw him charging forwards and yelled for him to stop but he didn't he kept running forwards until he was directly in front of the large blob.

"Dinner time jackass!" he yelled releasing his grip on the grenades lever and hurling it into its mouth.

GULP

The dumb dogoo swallowed the grenade oblivious to its idiocy.

Not stopping Adrian ran back and grabbed Nepgear pulling her to the ground in the nick of time as the grenade detonated blowing up the dogoo next to them obliterating it in a mighty explosion that shook the earth while bits of shards from the grenade pierced through the dogoos jelly body and flew everywhere some of them being shielded from Nepgear by Adrian who lied on top of her taking the majority of the shards to his vest.

After that the entire forest was once again silent all the fighting having finally ceased.

Adrian rolled off of Nepgear who returned to her normal self in another flash of light. Her face was as red as a beat and eyes wide like saucers, though Adrian didn't care as he had just take a shit ton of grenade shrapnel to the back and despite the vest having taken all the damage it still hurt like hell.

'Ow.'

 **A/N: Well that's a wrap. Again choose a pairing or I'll choose one myself. Anyways please leave a review it helps motivate me to write. Now if you excuse me I have to get an earful from Neptune for not including her enough in the story.**


	8. You've Got a Friend In You

"Hold still now."

Adrian suppressed an urge to scream and instead let out a low growl as another metal fragment was pulled out from his back.

So his vest hadn't fully absorbed all the shards. It stopped them, but it didn't stop them from piercing his skin and burrowing into the flesh. That probably had to do with the fact his vest wasn't charged.

Adrian turned his head to the side to see Compa holding a pair of pliers. Next to them on the kitchen table was a bowl of red water with metal bits from the grenade that were embedded in his back lying at the bottom.

Compa bandaged his bloody back and when she was done took a step back to admire her work. "All done." she said happily.

Still a bit sore Adrian stood up slowly and reached for his bdu and undershirt which were sitting on the table as well. "Thank you, miss Compa."

"Oh it was no trouble." She told him.

She helped him over to the couch were he took a seat and took a load off lying down on the couch completely shirtless and not caring. He was to tired. Pain wasn't so tolerable without his vest or its morphine injection system so his body was crying after all the beatings from earlier. Compa had fed him some soup that was supposed to help ease the pain and it did help a bit but not as much as the morphine had and no matter how much he asked she kept denying giving him any.

"Well I'll be taking off for the night, I hope you feel better Sheppy." Compa said packing up her tools. He was so tired he couldn't say anything so all he did was give her a thumbs up which she accepted as a thank you.

With IF and Compa gone that left Adrian alone on the couch with just his thoughts to keep him company. He could flip on the tv and see what kind of shows this world had to offer, but in all honesty he was in no mode for that right now. He needed to think of his next move. If the aliens were here then they were not just going to wait idly by until he came to them, no he had to find them and stop them before they could do anything to harm this world.

Adrian looked down at the dog tags around his neck. He couldn't let it happen to this one like it had his.

A pair of eyes from above him peeked over the couch and immediately knew who it was based on the short purple hair and eyes.

"Hi." she said.

"Hello." He replied.

Neptune jumped over the couch. Thankfully not on him.

"So whatcha doin'?" she asked taking a seat on the other couch.

'God this kid is gonna be a fucking pain.'

"Thinking."

Neptune hummed. "Thinking is boring. Thinking isn't as fun as doing. I like doing things." she said childishly kicking her legs back and forth.

His eyes darted over to her. "Is there a reason your here?"

Her reply was a shrug of the shoulders, "Nep Jr. is in the shower and Histoire is doing boring ol' work. Plus after a 'discussion' with the author he promised to add me more in the story." He had no clue what the hell any of that last part meant but let it slide and focused on trying to rest his aching back.

'Just need to rest…'

Adrian closed his eyes and began to drift off to sleep but opened them when he felt someone poking him on the chest. Cracking one eye open he could see it was Neptune who was on her knees next to him poking at his chest.

"What?" he asked trying not to sound pissed despite how much he was that she was continuing to pester him after he saved his sister from a storm of shrapnel.

"Oh nothing, just curious. You know Nep Jr has been talking about you non stop since she had met you, asking me question after question about you." Neptune said casually poking at his chest which for Adrian was getting rather annoying.

"Really? asking about what?" He asked her intrigued.

"Oh just things about like who you are, where your from, and stuff like that. But that got me thinking, I don't know jackety about ya', so what's the deal bro?"

Well he should have seen this coming, he knew it would only be a matter of time before someone started asking questions about him, but he hadn't expected it to be a child of all people. He couldn't tell her everything like how he was from another world and was hunting for a hostile alien force that could potentially threaten this world, she would just think he was crazy. So he was going to have to be discreet about what he gave away.

"Well…" Adrian adjusted himself slowly sitting up with his bandaged back against the couch pillow. Neptune looked at him expectantly. "My name is Adrian Michael Shephard, I come from a small community outside of the four nations nowhere special and frankly kind of boring. Grew up with my mom, dad, and younger sister. Of course when I turned eighteen I left home to explore Gamindustri and traveled all over the place taking on odd jobs for money eventually though I got a job offer from a big time private company who were looking to recruit me into their corporation as an agent I guess you could say."

Neptune's eyes sparkled, "oooooh so your like Iffy. She's an agent for the guild."

Adrian nodded, "Yeah I guess you could say that. But my work consisted more of just guarding facilities and testing experimental weapons and gear out in the field."

"So is that why you were in that crash?" Neptune asked placing her arms on the couch and resting her head on them.

"I was actually being transported to another facility. But I suppose it doesn't matter if I go back seeing as my contract for them was going to expire soon anyways." He lied. It wasn't that much of a story but it was one that could cover for his gear and the crash site. He just needed to keep the story straight incase someone else asked about it. If he told a different story and others found out they would know he was lying and get suspicious.

"So where you going to go now? You gonna travel around being a kick butt mercenary for hire?"

Adrian shrugged his shoulders, "Dunno, though Histoire has offered me a job to work for her so I guess I'll stick around and see how that goes." He looked at Neptune who just stared back at him.

"Neptune, can I ask how it was you found me?" He needed to know how she found him. What was a little girl like her doing in that cave? And how did she get him out of that hole?

Of course he was doubting she was even normal after seeing his older sister transform into whatever that display earlier was. (He thinks Nepgear is the older sister FYI)

Neptune smiled sheepishly, "Oh that. Yeah. Histy had kicked me out of the basilicom saying 'I didn't take my job as a CPU seriously.' So I was just running around Virtua Forest when by plot convenience I stumbled across your foot tracks. So I followed them to the cave which was where I found you in that icky water hole."

'Hm so that's how she found- wait what did she just say?'

"So I carried you all the way back to the basilicom and-" Neptune continued but he stopped her.

"Wait, wait, repeat what you just said."

Neptune looked at him confused. "About Histy kicking me out? Well I was just playing video games when she barged in and started shouting-"

"No, no, about saying you being a CPU."

'Their is no way. No' He refused to believe she was the supposed god of this country. There was no way a little girl could be the countries leader.

"Oh yeah, duh you probably haven't seen me transform before. Silly me. I'm the CPU of Planeptune." She sounded so casual about it to.

Adrian's right eye twitched as he soaked in the information almost wanting to bust out in laughter. This girl. This annoying, childish, little girl was the ruler of this entire country. Now this wouldn't have bothered Adrian so much as it did if not for the following reasons. One being this world was generations ahead of Earth's technology and being led by this kid. Now Earth wasn't perfect and he knew that, but the fact this girl was leading a country with technology far superior to all his back on Earth sort of made Adrian question his own countries leaders. And two, how had this country not fucking collapse to the ground because of her?

"And do you like take care of all the politics and stuff here or does that go to other people?" He asked trying to prevent himself from having a mental breakdown.

"Nah I let Histoire do all the paperwork and country mumbo jumbo. All I gotta do is sit back and look pretty like the cutie that I am." she smiled.

'Well at least someone competent is taking care of this country…'

Adrian wanted to question her more, but was unable to as a wave of burning pain suddenly came from his left arm. The exact spot where the parasite was.

Neptune saw him wince and glance at his arm.

"Hey Sheppy you okay?" Neptune asked sounding legitimately concerned.

Adrian looked up at her doing best to mask the pain he was feeling. "Y-Yeah um- I just need to go to the bathroom." He stood up ignoring the pain in his back and rushed out of the living room and to the bathroom that was now vacant.

He went inside shut the door behind him locking it.

'Shit, shit, shit!' He clutched his left arm painfully. The pain he felt was very similar to the one he felt back inside the hole, not quite as bad but it still made him want to yell.

Taking deep breaths to hopefully sooth the pain Adrian made his way over to the sink and unwrapped the first layer of bandages exposing the thick layer of bloodied gauze pads underneath that were moving slightly indicating the parasite was moving around.

Mentally preparing himself for seeing the horrid abomination again, he undead the tap wrapped around his arm holding the gauze in place and slowly began removing them.

No matter how many times he saw this damn thing it still made Adrian feel sick to his stomach, and right now he felt like doing such and so much more.

The thing had grown bigger. When he had first seen it, it was about four inches in length and two in width. But now it had grown a couple more inches encompassing more of the hole in his arm and the first segment of its carapace just below the head was now a light gray shade. As for his carved out flesh, it was also changing and not in a healthy way. The bleeding had stopped but he could make out hints small blackened veins just underneath the centipede.

The alien wriggled slightly causing another wave of pain to strike Adrian nearly falling to the bathroom floor, but caught himself on the sink just in time.

He needs to do something. He can't wait around any longer for this thing to get any bigger let alone be inside of him.

Knock Knock Knock

"Mister Shephard are you in there?" The familiar soft voice of Histoire said from behind the door stopping Adrian in his tracks.

And he knew the person who could help him. Adrian rushed towards the door and opened it not caring if his parasite was out in the open she already knew it was in him anyway and she was going to tell him what she knew about it. Before Histoire could say anything he grabbed her by the floating book she sat on and pulled her inside slamming the door behind them.

She was clearly taken by surprise by his actions and had a slight blush on her face at the sight of the fact he was shirtless.

"The fuck do you know about this little shit?" he asked keeping his voice down so as to not alert Nepgear or Neptune. He showed Histoire his parasite and she eyed it alarm written on her facial features.

"D-Did-Did it-"

"Grow? Yeah two whole fucking inches and now it's doing something to my blood vessels. What I want to know is, why you didn't have the doctors remove it when you first found it?"

"Mister Shephard please calm down, you must understand the true severity of this being."

Adrian frowned, "The hell are you talking about? What do you know about this?"

Histoire was agitated as she constantly shifted her position on the book. "Well we know nothing about the creature but the x-rays performed have shown that it is much more complex than it truly looks."

Adrian waved his hand gesturing for her to continue.

"You see Mister Shephard, the creature isn't just borrowed into your arm, its somehow managed to find a way to merge itself into you connecting with your circulatory and nervous system's forming a symbiotic relationship. In other words if we were to try to remove the creature it would not only die but-"

"It would kill me as well…" Adrian finished.

Histoire nodded sadly, "Mister Shephard I would not have let the creature stay inside of you even if it was wasn't lethal, but I can promise you as the tome of Gamindustri I will find a way to rid you of this burden. But I also need your help as well."

Adrian sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It's not like I have much of a choice anyways, so if I'm gonna possibly die I might as well go down fighting. So was their a reason you needed to speak with me?"

"As a matter of fact yes. I was coming to find you because I believe I may have a lead or a possible connection. I have recently discovered the guild had been putting out a bounty on what many monster hunters and guild workers are calling 'The Thieving Shroud' an unknown monster that for years has been robbing stores and homes all across Gamindustri for years."

Adrian raised an eyebrow. "So what? It's just a monster what makes this thing so different?"

Histoire shook her head, "No, this behavior is completely different than from how normal monsters act. This creature has actively seeked out homes preferably ones without residents present and would raid them of fruit, canned foods, and other items like batteries and such. But also it has actively avoided combat running away when pursued by people and hunters, never making an attempt to kill them. This action is completely foreign to how a monster should act."

Adrian crossed his arms and looked down at the Histoire, "and let me guess you want me to track it down and kill it?"

Histoire shook her head rapidly, "No, no, no, I need you to track it down and attempt to make contact with it, if it is intelligent then you should have no problem making contact so long as you don't threaten it."

"Okay I understand that, but how the hell am I going to find it? I doubt its gonna leave behind a trail of footsteps for me to follow it."

"No it won't but the Guild has been trying to take it down for years now and have been actively keeping tabs on its break ins and tracking its movements. You can find information there. But we must hurry this creature's existence has just reached me then no doubt more people will learn to and actively seek it out to kill it."

Adrian nodded, "I can head out in a few days." This worried Histoire as she knew of Adrians back injury and was about to express her concerns but he held up his hand stopping her. "Don't worry about my back, I've fought in worse conditions than this."

Histoire reluctantly nodded, "Very well, I shall prepare the necessities for your mission. I suggest you rest for the night. We need to hurry and find the beast."

Adrian nodded, "Don't worry ma'am I've got a history of defying the odds."

 **A/N: Another short chapter sorry have another story Im working on but I will try to work on making chapters as much as I possibly can. Thank you for all the reviews and your suggestions for pairings. As far as pairings go I have an idea on who I would want but she's more of a lesser known character but I think she would fit Adrian quite well. Again thank you all and I will see ya later.**


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